ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06

1aSC10. The effects of feedback in auditory looming tasks.

A. Paige Wuestefeld

Lawrence D. Rosenblum

Dept. of Psych., Univ. of California, Riverside, CA, 92521

Previous research [Rosenblum et al., Perception 22, 1467--1482 (1993)] demonstrates that listeners are able to make somewhat accurate anticipatory judgments regarding the time to arrival of a looming sound source and that performance feedback significantly improves these judgments. The present research examines the effects on performance of providing feedback to listeners and subsequently withdrawing it. Some visual research involving the extrapolation of movement suggests that, upon withdrawing feedback, performance will revert back to its original level. Subjects made judgments about the time to arrival of an approaching car based on various portions of the event. Each subject participated in three experimental sessions on consecutive days. Subjects were divided into three groups which received differing feedback schedules. For all groups, the first session contained no performance feedback. The withdrawal group received feedback during the second session, but not the third. One control group received no feedback for the remainder of the experiment. A second group control group received feedback for both the second and third sessions. When feedback was withdrawn, performance between the second and third sessions did not differ significantly. Thus, unlike the previous visual effects, performance did not revert back to its original level.