Interference effect of the animal sounds distractors.

<p>RTs of the unimodal (A+ and V+), bimodal congruent (A+V+) and bimodal incongruent (A−V+ and A+V−) conditions are presented. RTs were first transformed to a log scale and then averaged across all participants. The log-scale was converted back to ms for displays purposes. The error bars represent one standard error of the mean. Firstly, RTs to the A−V+ condition (incongruent with auditory distractors) were significantly longer than to the V+ condition <i>only</i> when auditory distractors were animal sounds (panels A and C). When the auditory distractor was not an animal, but a means of transport, there was no supplementary processing cost in presence of the auditory distractor (panel B). Secondly, RTs to the A+V− condition (incongruent with visual distractors) were always similar to RTs to A+ condition: there was no interference effect for visual distractors, whatever the category of the target or the category of the distractor (see panels A, B, and C). Finally, RTs to the bimodal A+V+ condition were clearly shorter than both unimodal A+ and V+ conditions, for the three experiments (panels A, B, and C).