Affective Multimodal Displays: Acoustic Spectra Modulates Perception of Auditory-Tactile Signals

Abstract

Emotional events may interrupt ongoing cognitive processes and automatically grab attention, modulating the subsequent perceptual processes. Hence, emotional eliciting stimuli might effectively be used in warning applications, where a fast and accurate response from users is required. In addition, conveying information through an optimum multisensory combination can lead to a further enhancement of user responses. In the present study we investigated the emotional response to sounds differing in their acoustic spectra, and their influence on speeded detection of auditory-somatosensory stimuli. Higher sound frequencies resulted in an increase in emotional arousal. We suggest that emotional processes might be responsible for the different auditory-somatosensory integration patterns observed for low and high frequency sounds. The presented results might have important implications for the design of auditory and multisensory warning interfaces.