Top-down cross-modal influences on simple perceptual tasks

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Cognitive illusions have provided an essential basis for understanding cognitive processes across a range of contexts. Such sources of error in the performance of cognitive tasks have been fundamental in instructing researchers about mechanisms underlying low-level perceptual experience (Bregman, 1993; Lackner, 1972; Milner & Dyde, 2003; Warren, 1981, 1993), remembering (Bartlett, 1932; Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989; Johnson, et al., 1993; Roediger & McDermott, 1995), and judgment and decision-making (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, 1979). This research has shown that human information processing reflects a construction of reality that is sometimes erroneous (see Koriat, et al., 2000, and Warren, 1981, for reviews). In the case of auditory perceptual experience, an appreciation of this role of constructive processes must complement the more traditional approach of investigating the role of low-level processing of sensory inputs in the perception of simple sounds and sound sequences (e.g., Hirsh, 1959; Miller & Dexter, 1988). Persuaded by arguments provided by Bregman (1993) and Warren (1993), my proposed research will balance this more typical emphasis on the role of bottom-up processing in auditory and visual perception by providing an investigation of top-down sources of error in the perception of the spatial location, temporal duration and intensity of auditory and visual events. Because my goal is to obtain novel insights into fundamental cognitive processes, the knowledge gained from my research program will have broad applicability across a diversity of fields. For example, errors and inefficiency in perception may represent obstacles to progress in the acquisition of skill in the classroom and to productivity in the workplace. In other contexts for which the difference between life and death depends on responding effectively to rapidly changing circumstances, impairments of perception threaten human safety in domains ranging from air travel, emergency medicine, to armed forces missions.