Brochard, R. , Tassin, M. & Zagar, D.
Psychology Dept/SPMS Lab. Universite de Bourgogne. Dijon, France
Background music affects the speed of visual discrimination. For example, pictures are processed faster when they are displayed "on beat", i.e. in synchrony with a highly expected time position of an auditory rhythm. The objective of our study was to investigate if similar effects could be observed with written words. 32 participants were presented with bisyllabic words which were displayed on the screen while a to-be-ignored binary sound sequence looped. In each trial, a first group of letters, corresponding to the first part of an item (P1), was displayed for 40 ms. Then it was erased (for 125 ms) until the remaining part of the item (P2) was displayed (also for 40 ms). Depending on the trials, the letters of P1 could be congruent with the correct syllabation of the item (e.g. pan in pan/da) or not (e.g. pa in pa/nda). Participants had to perfom a lexical decision on P1+P2. Our results showed that incorrect syllabation of written words led to longer RTs. More interestingly, this disadvantage was increased when P1 occurred on-beat with the auditory rhythm. This suggests, in accordance with Jones's Dynamic Attending Theory, that the visual word recognition can be influenced by the oscillations of auditory attention.