FASTER REACTION-TIMES IN THE BLIND THAN SIGHTED DURING BIMODAL DIVIDED ATTENTION

Parallel auditory and tactile discrimination performance of early blin d adults and sighted control subjects was compared with each other in a bimodal divided-attention task. Stimulus blocks were composed of int ermixed auditory and tactile stimuli. In each modality, infrequent, ta rget stimuli differed from frequent, nontarget stimuli by location. Th e subject's task was to attend to both modalities simultaneously and t o respond to both auditory and tactile targets. The blind had signific antly shorter reaction times (RTs) to auditory targets than the sighte d whereas the groups did not differ from each other in hit or false-al arm rates. The blind subjects' RTs to tactile targets were shorter tha n those of the sighted in light but did not differ significantly from the RTs of the sighted in dark. The results suggest that the blind are more effective in bimodal divided-attention performance than the sigh ted.