On measuring selective attention to an expected sensory modality

Spence, Charles; Driver, Jon · 1997 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03211906

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Summary

This paper addresses the methodological challenges in measuring selective attention to specific sensory modalities (auditory vs. visual). Previous research suggested that individuals could direct attention to one modality, resulting in faster processing, but these findings were confounded by alternative explanations such as response priming, criterion shifts, stimulus repetition effects (modality-shifting effects), and spatial confounds. The authors aimed to determine whether attention to a sensory modality persists when these confounding factors are controlled. To isolate modality-specific attention, the authors conducted four experiments using trial-by-trial symbolic visual cues to predict the likely target modality. This design prevented the confounding of expectancy with stimulus repetition, as modality changed randomly between trials. Crucially, auditory and visual targets were presented from the same set of spatial locations to eliminate spatial-cuing confounds. Experiment 1 utilized a speeded detection task with catch trials to assess criterion shifts. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 employed intensity, color, and spatial discrimination tasks, respectively, to further rule out response priming and criterion accounts. In Experiment 4, cues predicted both modality and spatial location to test for separable effects. The results demonstrated that responses were consistently faster and more accurate for targets presented in the expected modality compared to the unexpected modality across all experiments. In Experiment 1, reaction time benefits for valid cues were not accompanied by increased false alarms on catch trials, ruling out a simple lowering of response criteria. Discrimination tasks in subsequent experiments further excluded response priming as an explanation. Experiment 4 revealed that modality-cuing and spatial-cuing effects were separable, confirming that the benefits were not merely due to spatial attention. The study concludes that individuals can selectively direct covert attention to auditory or visual modalities independently of spatial location or response preparation. These findings validate the existence of modality-specific attentional selection and provide robust methodological frameworks for distinguishing true attentional shifts from non-attentional artifacts. This is significant for both normal cognitive psychology and clinical research, where deficits in modality selection have been hypothesized in populations such as schizophrenics and autistics, but previous evidence was methodologically ambiguous.

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Topics

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• multisensory crossmodal
• attention selective divided
• multimodal feedback