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Abstract

Purpose
To investigate whether visual search performance could be enhanced by rhythmic auditory stimulations and to assess the influence of individual external and internal factors.

Methods
Eye movement data were obtained from 29 young children from 16 to 48 months of age (17 male; mean = 36.9; sd = 9.89) during visual search tasks. In the within-subjects design, the order of visual (V) and audiovisual (AV) conditions was counterbalanced. Each condition contained 10 practice and experimental 64 trials. Search target located on 8 different spots with equal distance from the center while distractors were randomly distributed. Each set size (4, 6, 8, and 10) was presented 16 times. Fixation dot was shown for 1000 ms followed by a trial of 1000 ms Auditory stimulation was an isochronous and metrical sequence with 8 tones. The first tone that was accompanied by the appearance of visual stimuli, had a frequency of 880 Hz. The other seven tones had a frequency of 440 Hz. Each tone lasted 100 ms with an inter-onset-interval of 250 ms. Besides, all caregivers received questionnaires that assessed external (home music environment, and music use of caregiver) and internal (temperament types, and sensory processing patterns) factors.

Results
The major findings were (1) the number of search items per second was positively correlated with age and it was significantly higher (p = 0.046) in AV (2.07/sec) than V (1.84/sec); (2) in the lower set sizes (4 and 6), the number of responses on the target was higher in AV than V. (3) Analysis of a serial of questionnaires using the ordinary least squares regression with corrected cluster robust standard errors, we observed multiple casual associations between search performance and internal factors (sensory profile and temperament types) but not with external factors. More interestingly, the associations between internal factors search performance differed from AV and V.

Conclusion
In sum, our results showed concurrent rhythmic auditory stimulations might influence visual search speed. Moreover, internal individual differences in the early years play a significant role in visual search.
We suggest that future studies further focus on investigating the effect of varying AV regularity and/or synchrony, and the dynamic interaction between individual differences and search performance.