Crossmodal cueing effects on multisensory integration

S P Blurton1, M Gondan2, M W Greenlee1

1Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany
2Institute for Medical Biometry & Informatics, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Contact: steven.blurton@psychologie.uni-regensburg.de

It is well known that visual spatial cues affect performance in signal detection, that is, targets at correctly cued locations are detected faster, on average, than incorrectly cued targets [Posner, 1980, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 3–25]. In contrast, no significant effects were found with peripheral visual cues in auditory target detection [Driver & Spence, 1998, Trends in Cognitive Science, 2, 254–262]. We revisited these findings with two experiments (n = 18 participants) in which central and peripheral visual cues were presented together with audiovisual redundant targets presented with onset asynchrony. We replicated the results of the original spatial cueing paradigm as well as those with crossmodal cues. The Diffusion Superposition Model [Schwarz, 1994, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 38, 504–520] can explain response times for redundant targets and we found that although response times to auditory targets were much less affected by visual cues than those to visual targets, this result can be readily explained by the model, assuming modality invariant cueing effects. We provide explanations for this apparent paradox within the diffusion superposition framework.

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