Modality specificity of auditory and visual pattern recognition: implications for the assessment of central auditory processing disorders.

We determined the degree of overlap in required processing resources between simultaneously performed non-verbal auditory and visual pattern-recognition tasks. In experiment 1, concurrent presentation of binary auditory frequency pattern sequences interfered with recognition memory of both binary auditory sound pressure level and binary color sequences, but the amount of interference was greater with auditory-level patterns. In experiment 2, mutual interference was demonstrated between auditory level and visual color pattern sequences. We conclude that dual-task performance using auditory and visual pattern-recognition tasks is limited by modality-specific perceptual factors and by modality-independent cognitive factors not specific to a single sensory modality. It is concluded that poor performance on a single pattern-recognition task cannot be associated in a one-to-one fashion with a single perceptual ability or process.