Deploying attention to the target location of a pointing action modulates audiovisual processes at nontarget locations
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Deploying attention to the target location of a pointing action modulates audiovisual processes at nontarget locations Tristan Loria 1,2
&
Kanji Tanaka 2,3 & Katsumi Watanabe 1,2,4 & Luc Tremblay 1
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract The current study examined how the deployment of spatial attention at the onset of a pointing movement influenced audiovisual crossmodal interactions at the target of the pointing action and at nontarget locations. These interactions were quantified by measuring the susceptibility to the fission (i.e., reporting two visual flashes under one flash and two auditory beep pairings) and fusion (i.e., reporting one flash under two flashes and one beep pairing) audiovisual illusions. At movement onset, unimodal, or auditory and visual bimodal stimuli were either presented at the target of the pointing action or in an adjacent, nontarget location. In Experiment 1, perceptual accuracy within the unimodal and bimodal conditions was lower in the nontarget relative to the target condition. The fission illusion was uninfluenced by target condition. However, the fusion illusion was more likely to be reported at the target relative to the nontarget location. In Experiment 2, the stimuli from Experiment 1 were further presented at a location near where the eyes were fixated (i.e., congruent condition), where the hand was aiming (i.e., target), or in a location where neither the eyes were fixated nor the hand was aiming. The results yielded the greatest susceptibility to the fusion illusion when the visual location and movement end points were congruent relative to when either movement or fixation was incongruent. Although attention may facilitate the processing of unisensory and multisensory cues in general, attention might have the strongest influence on the audiovisual integration mechanisms that underlie the sound-induced fusion illusion. Keywords Vision . Audition . Attention . Multisensory . Pointing Multisensory perception occurs via the combination and integration of signals from the various sensory channels (i.e., vision and audition in the context of the present study). Crossmodal interactions, in which information presented in one sensory modality influences perception in an alternate modality, is one mechanism underlying multisensory perception (e.g., Spence & Driver, 1997). Once considered neurophysiological in nature, recent behavioral experiments have examined how multisensory perception may be influenced by cognitive or perceptual processes like attention (i.e., for a
* Luc Tremblay [email protected] 1
Centre for Motor Control, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
3
Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
4
Art & Design, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
review, see van Atteveldt, Murray, Thut, & Schroeder, 2014). Although our understanding of attention is admittedly limited (see Hommel et al., 2019), a
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