Cross-modal associations between vision, touch, and audition influence visual search through top-down attention, not bottom-up capture

Abstract

Recently, Guzman-Martinez, Ortega, Grabowecky, Mossbridge, and Suzuki (Current Biology : CB, 22(5), [383][384][385][386][387][388] 2012) reported that observers could systematically match auditory amplitude modulations and tactile amplitude modulations to visual spatial frequencies, proposing that these cross-modal matches produced automatic attentional effects. Using a series of visual search tasks, we investigated whether informative auditory, tactile, or bimodal cues can guide attention toward a visual Gabor of matched spatial frequency (among others with different spatial frequencies). These cues improved visual search for some but not all frequencies. Auditory cues improved search only for the lowest and highest spatial frequencies, whereas tactile cues were more effective and frequency specific, although less effective than visual cues. Importantly, although tactile cues could produce efficient search when informative, they had no effect when uninformative. This suggests that cross-modal frequency matching occurs at a cognitive rather than sensory level and, therefore, influences visual search through voluntary, goaldirected behavior, rather than automatic attentional capture.

Perceived Congruency in Audiovisual Stimuli Consisting of Gabor Patches and AM and FM Tones

“…The results demonstrated that participants "consistently and absolutely" matched a certain modulation frequency to a Gabor patch of a certain spatial frequency. A similar study (Orchard-Mills et al, 2013a, 2013b confirmed the relations between AM auditory stimuli and the spatial frequency of Gabor patches. However, the exact matching between these two parameters varied in this study and the study by Guzman-Martinez et al For example, while in the study of Orchard-Mills et al (2013a) the stimuli with the visual component of 2 cycles/cm were matched with 3-Hz modulated white noise, in the study by Guzman-Martinez et al the same visual component was matched with 6-Hz modulated white noise.…”

“…According to previous studies (Evans and Treisman, 2010;Guzman-Martinez et al, 2012;Orchard-Mills et al, 2013a;Orchard-Mills et al, 2013b), the spatial frequency of the Gabor patch can evoke differences in perceived congruency in combinations with different tones. In order to clarify and compare the roles of different parameters on perceived congruency, a wide range of stimulus parameters was used.…”

“…Based on previous findings, we can also assume that Gabor patches of a certain spatial frequency can evoke different perceived congruency when combined with tones of different modulation frequencies (Guzman-Martinez et al, 2012;Orchard-Mills et al, 2013a;2013b). Therefore, (in)congruency ratings for both spatial frequency of the Gabor patch and the modulation frequency of the tone were combined for analysis.…”

“…The most commonly used types of modulations are amplitude and frequency modulations. In the previously mentioned studies (Guzman-Martinez et al, 2012;Orchard-Mills et al, 2013a, 2013b, the frequency of AM white noise was matched with a spatial frequency of a static patch. Interestingly, in a study by Orchard-Mills et al (2013a) the search benefits persisted even for the stimuli where the spatial frequency of the Gabor patch did not match the tone-modulation frequency.…”

Social touch alters newborn monkey behavior

“…Heightened attention capture in infants may reflect the anticipation of, or preparation for, an interaction (Galazka & Nyström, 2016). In addition, vision and touch have early sensory interactions, and studies in adults reveal that stimulation in one sensory modality can influence efficiency in the other (Orchard-Mills, Alais, & Van der Burg, 2013). The findings in the present study open up the possibility that the attentional effects of social touch may not be specific to social stimuli only, and additional studies with nonsocial control stimuli are necessary to test this possibility.…”