Research on multimodal information processing has seen a surge in recent years. Most of this research suffers from a significant shortcoming: the failure to perform crossmodal matching. Crossmodal matching refers to equating perceived intensities of stimuli across two sensory modalities. This step is critical for avoiding that modality is confounded with other signal properties. Very few studies include this step, and there is no agreed-upon matching technique. An experiment comparing two different approaches shows that even minor variations can lead to significant differences in match values and intraindividual match variability. Our findings highlight the need for developing and employing a valid crossmodal matching procedure for future studies.
['Brandon J. Pitts', 'Sara Lu Riggs', 'Nadine Sarter']
Crossmodal Matching: A Critical but Neglected Step in Multimodal Research