Human sensory dominance

Human Ss matched an auditory and a visual stimulus for subjective magnitude. Then each stimulus was used as a cue in a reaction time task. On occasions when both stimuli were presented simultaneously, Ss’ responding was seen to be dominated by the visual stimulus. Of further interest was the finding that on some occasions of simultaneous light-tone presentation Ss were unaware that the tone had been presented. This apparent prepotency of the visual over the auditory stimulus was seen to persist across a variety of experimental conditions, which included giving Ss verbal instructions to respond to the tone when both stimuli were presented simultaneously.