Crossmodal attentional control sets between vision and audition

Mast, Frank; Frings, Christian; Spence, Charles · 2017 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.05.011

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Summary

This study investigates whether attentional control sets, which guide the automatic selection of stimuli based on task-relevant features, operate across sensory modalities. Specifically, the authors test the hypothesis of crossmodal contingent capture, proposing that top-down attentional sets can include features from both vision and audition, thereby influencing selection processes beyond a single sense. While previous research established contingent capture in visual contexts and hinted at crossmodal effects involving touch, this work aims to generalize the principle to audiovisual interactions and determine if the mechanism applies regardless of which modality serves as the primary task dimension. The researchers conducted two experiments using a non-spatial response compatibility task. In Experiment 1, participants responded to the color of visual targets (red or green circles) while ignoring preceding visual distractors. Each target was consistently paired with a specific auditory tone (200 Hz or 700 Hz), establishing a bimodal attentional control set. Distractors were accompanied by either a congruent sound (matching the target’s associated tone) or an incongruent sound. Experiment 2 reversed the primary modality: participants responded to the pitch of auditory targets while ignoring auditory distractors. Visual stimuli (colored circles) accompanied the targets and distractors, with distractors featuring either congruent or incongruent visual features relative to the target’s associated color. In both experiments, the crossmodal feature was irrelevant to the response but served as a selection cue. The results demonstrated significant crossmodal contingent capture in both experiments. In Experiment 1, reaction time interference effects caused by distractors were significantly larger when the distractor’s auditory feature matched the target’s associated sound (congruent) compared to when it did not (incongruent). Similarly, in Experiment 2, larger compatibility effects were observed when distractors shared the visual feature associated with the auditory target. These findings indicate that distractors matching both the primary response feature and the secondary crossmodal selection feature captured attention more strongly than those matching only the primary feature. Error rates showed standard compatibility effects but no significant crossmodal interactions. These findings support the crossmodal contingent capture hypothesis, demonstrating that attentional control sets can incorporate features from multiple sensory modalities. The study confirms that this top-down mechanism is not restricted to visual primary tasks but also applies when audition is the primary modality. This suggests that multisensory attentional control sets play a critical role in both spatial and non-spatial selective attention, influencing early processing stages. The results imply that the brain integrates top-down expectations across senses to filter irrelevant information, enhancing behavioral efficiency in complex, multisensory environments.

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Topics

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• multisensory crossmodal
• multimodal feedback
• attention selective divided
• auditory