Is the Colavita effect replicable in an online study?

Abstract

Proper functioning in a multimodal environment requires us to be able to bind our senses into a coherent perception of the world. The Colavita effect is an instance of multisensory competition whereby we prioritize visual information over auditory information when they are presented simultaneously. Past research has shown the Colavita effect to be a robust phenomenon through resistance to several experimental manipulations. In recent years, researchers have opted to migrate many psychological studies to online platforms. However, studies of cognitive phenomena present a particular challenge due to their reliance on strict environmental controls. I aimed to examine if the Colavita visual dominance effect would be replicable in an online study. Participants completed a Colavita protocol online and remotely where they were asked to respond to the modality of unimodal (auditory, visual) and bimodal (audiovisual) stimuli. Bayesian analyses revealed that participants did not respond preferentially to the visual component of audiovisual stimuli, and thus did not show evidence for a Colavita effect. Given past success in finding evidence for visual dominance in traditional laboratory settings and robustness in the literature, the absence of the Colavita effect is likely attributable to both the change in environment and variation in environment between participants.