Crossmodal Double Dissociations Between ‘What’ and ‘Where’

Double dissociations are typically used to examine the modularity of the brain, and its effect on behaviour. This double dissociation method has typically been used within one modality. Tresch, Sinnamon & Seamon [1] found double dissociations in participants’ ability to recognize the form or location of an object. We adapted the paradigm of Tresch et al. to become a crossmodal task. In Experiment 1, participants felt or saw random objects and determined whether the two objects presented within a modality were the same or different. We found that double dissociations of object recognition do not exist crossmodally. In Experiment 2, the same paradigm was utilized, but all stimuli were presented haptically. If the double dissociation effect exists, this would support the evidence from previous studies of crossmodal perceptual load. The implications will be discussed further.