Modal-based attention modulates attentional blink

Semantically congruent bimodal presentation modulates cognitive control over attentional guidance by working memory

Although previous studies have well established that audiovisual enhancement has a promoting effect on working memory and selective attention, there remains an open question about the influence of audiovisual enhancement on attentional guidance by working memory. To address this issue, the present study adopted a dual-task paradigm that combines a working memory task and a visual search task, in which the content of working memory was presented in audiovisual or visual modalities. Given the importance of search speed in memory-driven attentional suppression, we divided participants into two groups based on their reaction time (RT) in neutral trials and examined whether audiovisual enhancement in attentional suppression was modulated by search speed. The results showed that the slow search group exhibited a robust memory-driven attentional suppression effect, and the suppression effect started earlier and its magnitude was greater in the audiovisual condition than in the visual-only condition. However, among the faster search group, the suppression effect only occurred in the trials with longer RTs in the visual-only condition, and its temporal dynamics were selectively improved in the audiovisual condition. Furthermore, audiovisual enhancement of memory-driven attention evolved over time. These findings suggest that semantically congruent bimodal presentation can progressively facilitate the strength and temporal dynamics of memory-driven attentional suppression, and that search speed plays an important role in this process. This may be due to a synergistic effect between multisensory working memory representation and top-down suppression mechanism. The present study demonstrates the flexible role of audiovisual enhancement on cognitive control over memory-driven attention.

Pitch Improvement in Attentional Blink: A Study across Audiovisual Asymmetries

Attentional blink (AB) is a phenomenon in which the perception of a second target is impaired when it appears within 200-500 ms after the first target. Sound affects an AB and is accompanied by the appearance of an asymmetry during audiovisual integration, but it is not known whether this is related to the tonal representation of sound. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of audiovisual asymmetry on attentional blink and whether the presentation of pitch improves the ability to detect a target during an AB that is accompanied by audiovisual asymmetry. The results showed that as the lag increased, the subject's target recognition improved and the pitch produced further improvements. These improvements exhibited a significant asymmetry across the audiovisual channel. Our findings could contribute to better utilizations of audiovisual integration resources to improve attentional transients and auditory recognition decline, which could be useful in areas such as driving and education.

Seeing is believing: Larger Colavita effect in school-aged children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to visually relevant compensatory activities and cognitive strategies in children. Previous studies have identified difficulties with audiovisual integration in children with ADHD, but the characteristics of the visual dominance effect when processing multisensory stimuli are not clear in children with ADHD. The current study used the Colavita paradigm to explore the visual dominance effect in school-aged children with ADHD. The results found that, compared with typically developing children, children with ADHD had a higher proportion of "visual-auditory" trials and a lower proportion of "simultaneous" trials. The study also found that the proportion of visual-auditory trials in children with ADHD decreased as their Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham-IV rating scale (SNAP-IV) inattention scores increased. The results showed that school-aged children with ADHD had a larger Colavita effect, which decreased with the severity of inattentive symptoms. This may be due to an overreliance on visual information and an abnormal integration time window. The connection between multisensory cognitive processing performance and clinical symptoms found in the current study provides empirical and theoretical support for the knowledge base of multisensory and cognitive abilities in disorders.

The dissociation of semantically congruent and incongruent cross-modal effects on the visual attentional blink

Introduction

Recent studies have found that the sound-induced alleviation of visual attentional blink, a well-known phenomenon exemplifying the beneficial influence of multisensory integration on time-based attention, was larger when that sound was semantically congruent relative to incongruent with the second visual target (T2). Although such an audiovisual congruency effect has been attributed mainly to the semantic conflict carried by the incongruent sound restraining that sound from facilitating T2 processing, it is still unclear whether the integrated semantic information carried by the congruent sound benefits T2 processing.

Methods

To dissociate the congruence-induced benefit and incongruence-induced reduction in the alleviation of visual attentional blink at the behavioral and neural levels, the present study combined behavioral measures and event-related potential (ERP) recordings in a visual attentional blink task wherein the T2-accompanying sound, when delivered, could be semantically neutral in addition to congruent or incongruent with respect to T2.

Results

The behavioral data clearly showed that compared to the neutral sound, the congruent sound improved T2 discrimination during the blink to a higher degree while the incongruent sound improved it to a lesser degree. The T2-locked ERP data revealed that the early occipital cross-modal N195 component (192-228 ms after T2 onset) was uniquely larger in the congruent-sound condition than in the neutral-sound and incongruent-sound conditions, whereas the late parietal cross-modal N440 component (400-500 ms) was prominent only in the incongruent-sound condition.

Discussion

These findings provide strong evidence that the modulating effect of audiovisual semantic congruency on the sound-induced alleviation of visual attentional blink contains not only a late incongruence-induced cost but also an early congruence-induced benefit, thereby demonstrating for the first time an unequivocal congruent-sound-induced benefit in alleviating the limitation of time-based visual attention.

Cross-modal enhancement of spatially unpredictable visual target discrimination during the attentional blink

The attentional blink can be substantially reduced by delivering a task-irrelevant sound synchronously with the second target (T2) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, which is further modulated by the semantic congruency between the sound and T2. The present study extended the cross-modal boost during attentional blink and the modulation of audiovisual semantic congruency in the spatial domain by showing that a spatially uninformative, semantically congruent (but not incongruent) sound could even improve the discrimination of spatially unpredictable T2 during attentional blink. T2-locked event-related potential (ERP) data yielded that the early cross-modal P195 difference component (184-234 ms) over the occipital scalp contralateral to the T2 location was larger preceding accurate than inaccurate discriminations of semantically congruent, but not incongruent, audiovisual T2s. Interestingly, the N2pc component (194-244 ms) associated with visual-spatial attentional allocation was enlarged for incongruent audiovisual T2s relative to congruent audiovisual and unisensory visual T2s only when they were accurately discriminated. These ERP findings suggest that the spatially extended cross-modal boost during attentional blink involves an early cross-modal interaction strengthening the perceptual processing of T2, without any sound-induced enhancement of visual-spatial attentional allocation toward T2. In contrast, the absence of an accuracy decrease in response to semantically incongruent audiovisual T2s may originate from the semantic mismatch capturing extra visual-spatial attentional resources toward T2.

Effect of Target Semantic Consistency in Different Sequence Positions and Processing Modes on T2 Recognition: Integration and Suppression Based on Cross-Modal Processing

In the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, sound affects participants' recognition of targets. Although many studies have shown that sound improves cross-modal processing, researchers have not yet explored the effects of sound semantic information with respect to different locations and processing modalities after removing sound saliency. In this study, the RSVP paradigm was used to investigate the difference between attention under conditions of consistent and inconsistent semantics with the target (Experiment 1), as well as the difference between top-down (Experiment 2) and bottom-up processing (Experiment 3) for sounds with consistent semantics with target 2 (T2) at different sequence locations after removing sound saliency. The results showed that cross-modal processing significantly improved attentional blink (AB). The early or lagged appearance of sounds consistent with T2 did not affect participants' judgments in the exogenous attentional modality. However, visual target judgments were improved with endogenous attention. The sequential location of sounds consistent with T2 influenced the judgment of auditory and visual congruency. The results illustrate the effects of sound semantic information in different locations and processing modalities.

Modal-based attention modulates the redundant-signals effect: Role of unimodal target probability

Multisensory integration includes two behavioral manifestations: the modality dominance effect and the redundant-signals effect (RSE). RSE is a multisensory improvement effect in which individuals respond more quickly and accurately to bimodal audiovisual (AV) targets than to unimodal auditory (A) or visual (V) targets. Previous studies have confirmed that RSE is the product of modality interactions between different modalities. The goal of this study was to systematically investigate the effects of the modality dominance manipulated by modal-based attention and unimodal target probability on RSE. The results showed that when paying attention to both the A and V modalities (Exp. 1), RSE was not significantly different between unimodal target probabilities. When selectively paying attention to the A modality (Exp. 2A), RSE was also not significantly different between unimodal target probabilities. However, when selectively paying attention to the V modality (Exp. 2B), the magnitude of RSE showed a significant decreasing trend with the increasing probability of V targets. Our study is the first to reveal that the unimodal target probability significantly modulates RSE in visual selective attention, and this modulatory effect of the unimodal target probability on RSE is opposite to the modulatory effect on the modality dominance effect.

Multisensory Enhancement of Cognitive Control over Working Memory Capture of Attention in Children with ADHD

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder in school-age children. Although it has been well documented that children with ADHD are associated with impairment of executive functions including working memory (WM) and inhibitory control, there is not yet a consensus as to the relationship between ADHD and memory-driven attentional capture (i.e., representations in WM bias attention toward the WM-matched distractors). The present study herein examined whether children with ADHD have sufficient cognitive control to modulate memory-driven attentional capture. 73 school-age children (36 with ADHD and 37 matched typically developing (TD) children) were instructed to perform a visual search task while actively maintaining an item in WM. In such a paradigm, the modality and the validity of the memory sample were manipulated. The results showed that under the visual WM encoding condition, no memory-driven attentional capture was observed in TD children, but significant capture was found in children with ADHD. In addition, under the audiovisual WM encoding condition, memory-matched distractors did not capture the attention of both groups. The results indicate a deficit of cognitive control over memory-driven attentional capture in children with ADHD, which can be improved by multisensory WM encoding. These findings enrich the relationship between ADHD and cognitive control and provide new insight into the influence of cross-modal processing on attentional guidance.