Effects of Noise and Difficulty Level of Input Information in Auditory, Visual, and Audiovisual Information Processing

Abstract

To examine the effects of noise in auditory (A), visual (V), and audiovisual (AV) channels with varying difficulty levels of input information, 192 seventh grade Ss were tested under six conditions: A, V, and AV with and without noise. It was determined that noise had no detrimental effects upon information processing when input was not difficult, only A was significantly deteriorated by the presence of noise, whereas noise seemed to alert Ss in the AV treatment, AV was generally found to be better than A, which in turn was generally better than V, channel difference vanished when input was very difficult.