Perception it is: Processing level in multisensory selection

Modality-specific impacts of distractors on visual and auditory categorical decision-making: an evidence accumulation perspective

Our brain constantly processes multisensory inputs to make decisions and guide behaviors, but how goal-relevant processes are influenced by irrelevant information is unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of intermodal and intramodal task-irrelevant information on visual and auditory categorical decision-making. In both visual and auditory tasks, we manipulated the modality of irrelevant inputs (visual vs. auditory vs. none) and used linear discrimination analysis of EEG and hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM) to identify when and how task-irrelevant information affected decision-relevant processing. The results revealed modality-specific impacts of irrelevant inputs on visual and auditory categorical decision-making. The distinct effects on the visual task were shown on the neural components, with auditory distractors amplifying the sensory processing whereas visual distractors amplifying the post-sensory process. Conversely, the distinct effects on the auditory task were shown in behavioral performance and underlying cognitive processes. Visual distractors facilitate behavioral performance and affect both stages, but auditory distractors interfere with behavioral performance and impact on the sensory processing rather than the post-sensory decision stage. Overall, these findings suggested that auditory distractors affect the sensory processing stage of both tasks while visual distractors affect the post-sensory decision stage of visual categorical decision-making and both stages of auditory categorical decision-making. This study provides insights into how humans process information from multiple sensory modalities during decision-making by leveraging modality-specific impacts.

Predicting attentional allocation in real-world environments: The need to investigate crossmodal semantic guidance

Real-world environments are multisensory, meaningful, and highly complex. To parse these environments in a highly efficient manner, a subset of this information must be selected both within and across modalities. However, the bulk of attention research has been conducted within sensory modalities, with a particular focus on vision. Visual attention research has made great strides, with over a century of research methodically identifying the underlying mechanisms that allow us to select critical visual information. Spatial attention, attention to features, and object-based attention have all been studied extensively. More recently, research has established semantics (meaning) as a key component to allocating attention in real-world scenes, with the meaning of an item or environment affecting visual attentional selection. However, a full understanding of how semantic information modulates real-world attention requires studying more than vision in isolation. The world provides semantic information across all senses, but with this extra information comes greater complexity. Here, we summarize visual attention (including semantic-based visual attention), crossmodal attention, and argue for the importance of studying crossmodal semantic guidance of attention. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics.

A touching advantage: cross-modal stop-signals improve reactive response inhibition

The ability to inhibit an already initiated response is crucial for navigating the environment. However, it is unclear which characteristics make stop-signals more likely to be processed efficiently. In three consecutive studies, we demonstrate that stop-signal modality and location are key factors that influence reactive response inhibition. Study 1 shows that tactile stop-signals lead to better performance compared to visual stop-signals in an otherwise visual choice-reaction task. Results of Study 2 reveal that the location of the stop-signal matters. Specifically, if a visual stop-signal is presented at a different location compared to the visual go-signal, then stopping performance is enhanced. Extending these results, study 3 suggests that tactile stop-signals and location-distinct visual stop-signals retain their performance enhancing effect when visual distractors are presented at the location of the go-signal. In sum, these results confirm that stop-signal modality and location influence reactive response inhibition, even in the face of concurrent distractors. Future research may extend and generalize these findings to other cross-modal setups.

Alterations of Audiovisual Integration in Alzheimer's Disease

Audiovisual integration is a vital information process involved in cognition and is closely correlated with aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this review, we evaluated the altered audiovisual integrative behavioral symptoms in AD. We further analyzed the relationships between AD pathologies and audiovisual integration alterations bidirectionally and suggested the possible mechanisms of audiovisual integration alterations underlying AD, including the imbalance between energy demand and supply, activity-dependent degeneration, disrupted brain networks, and cognitive resource overloading. Then, based on the clinical characteristics including electrophysiological and imaging data related to audiovisual integration, we emphasized the value of audiovisual integration alterations as potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis and progression of AD. We also highlighted that treatments targeted audiovisual integration contributed to widespread pathological improvements in AD animal models and cognitive improvements in AD patients. Moreover, investigation into audiovisual integration alterations in AD also provided new insights and comprehension about sensory information processes.

Olfactory-gustatory simultaneity judgments: A preliminary study on the congruency-dependent temporal window of multisensory binding

BACKGROUND

A greater congruency of audio and video expands the temporal binding window (TBW). A similar phenomenon may occur with a combination of odor and taste, which are the main components of flavor.

OBJECTIVE

TBW is defined as the temporal resolution of synchrony perception. The larger the TBW, the lower the resolution. We hypothesized that the more congruent the odor and taste, the lower the temporal resolution of synchrony perception.

METHODS

To examine this hypothesis, 10 female participants performed simultaneity judgment (SJ) tasks under congruent (soy sauce odor with saline) and incongruent (cherry tree leaf odor with saline) conditions and evaluated the congruency with saltiness for the two odors. In the SJ tasks, participants reported whether odor and taste were presented simultaneously or successively. We assumed a Gaussian distribution for the temporal distributions of the simultaneous response rates and calculated the approximations. In addition, we computed the half width at half height (HWHH) as an index of TBW based on the coefficient of approximation for the temporal distribution of the simultaneous response rates.

RESULTS

HWHH was significantly larger under congruent condition than under incongruent condition. In addition, congruency with saltiness had a significant moderate positive correlation with HWHH.

CONCLUSION

The larger the HWHH, the lower the temporal resolution of synchrony perception, supporting the hypothesis. This study suggests that the width of TBW depends on the cross-modal congruency similar to the case for audio-visual SJs. However, methodological improvements, including a larger sample size and gender-independent recruitment of participants, are essential to enhance the reliability of the findings because some of the results did not provide sufficient ESs or power.

Perceptions of pelvic floor dysfunction and rehabilitation care amongst women in southeast China after radical hysterectomy: a qualitative study

Objective

To investigate the perceptions of pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) and rehabilitation care amongst women after radical hysterectomy and to explore ways to improve quality of care.

Methods

Thirty-six women who underwent radical hysterectomy at a hospital in southeast China were enrolled via purposive sampling. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted. The texts were analysed via qualitative content analysis.

Results

Four themes were obtained: serious lack of knowledge, heavy psychological burden, different coping strategies and great eagerness to receive multiparty support on PFD rehabilitation care.

Conclusion

The society and professional staff should strengthen health education on PFD. Professionals should offer education before and after surgery and actively provide rehabilitation consultation to promote the availability of rehabilitation to support women with PFD rehabilitation care. In addition, family-centred care is an important way to support women to return to normal life, and women's need for family support should be more actively expressed. Moreover, knowledge of medical insurance should be popularised, especially in rural areas in China.

The level of representation of irrelevant stimuli-Distractor-response binding within and between the senses

Binding theories assume that features of stimuli and executed responses can be integrated together in one event file (Hommel, Visual Cognition, 5, 183-216, 1998; Hommel, Cognitive Sciences, 8, 494-500, 2004). Every reencounter with one or more of the stored features leads to an automatic retrieval of the previously constructed event file and hence of the response-even the repetition of a task-irrelevant distractor stimulus can retrieve a previously encoded response. This so-called distractor-response binding effect is typically investigated using a sequential prime-probe design that allows the orthogonal variation of response relation (response repetition vs. resporrevertnse change) and distractor relation (distractor repetition vs. distractor change), while probe response times and error rates are measured as dependent variable. Previous research has shown that task-relevant stimuli can be represented at different levels (e.g., perceptual and conceptual; see Henson et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 376-384, 2014), yet it is not clear at which level of representation distractor stimuli are processed. In the present study, we focused on the level of representation of response-irrelevant distractor stimuli. To this end, a crossmodal distractor-response binding paradigm was used that enables the differentiation between the perceptual and conceptual representation of the distractor by allowing the systematic repetition and change of conceptual distractor features independent of perceptual repetitions. The results suggest that the repetition of perceptual distractor features is indispensable for the initiation of the retrieval process while the sole repetition of conceptual distractor features is not sufficient to start the retrieval process.

When irrelevant information helps: Extending the Eriksen-flanker task into a multisensory world

Charles W. Eriksen dedicated much of his research career to the field of cognitive psychology, investigating human information processing in those situations that required selection between competing stimuli. Together with his wife Barbara, he introduced the flanker task, which became one of the standard experimental tasks used by researchers to investigate the mechanisms underpinning selection. Although Eriksen himself was primarily interested in investigating visual selection, the flanker task was eventually adapted by other researchers to investigate human information processing and selection in a variety of nonvisual and multisensory situations. Here, we discuss the core aspects of the flanker task and interpret the evidence of the flanker task when used in crossmodal and multisensory settings. "Selection" has been a core topic of psychology for nearly 120 years. Nowadays, though, it is clear that we need to look at selection from a multisensory perspective-the flanker task, at least in its crossmodal and multisensory variants, is an important tool with which to investigate selection, attention, and multisensory information processing.

A bimodal extension of the Eriksen flanker task

The Eriksen flanker task is a traditional conflict paradigm for studying the influence of task-irrelevant information on the processing of task-relevant information. In this task, participants are asked to respond to a visual target item (e.g., a letter) that is flanked by task-irrelevant items (e.g., also letters). Responses are typically faster and more accurate when the task-irrelevant information is response-congruent with the visual target than when it is incongruent. Several researchers have attributed the starting point of this flanker effect to poor selective filtering at a perceptual level (e.g., spotlight models), which subsequently produces response competition at post-perceptual stages. The present study examined whether a flanker-like effect could also be established within a bimodal analog of the flanker task with auditory irrelevant letters and visual target letters, which must be processed along different processing routes. The results of two experiments revealed that a flanker-like effect is also present with bimodal stimuli. In contrast to the unimodal flanker task, however, the effect only emerged when flankers and targets shared the same letter name, but not when they were different letters mapped onto the same response. We conclude that the auditory flankers can influence the time needed to recognize visual targets but do not directly activate their associated responses.

Higher-Order Cognition Does Not Affect Multisensory Distractor Processing

Multisensory processing is required for the perception of the majority of everyday objects and events. In the case of irrelevant stimuli, the multisensory processing of features is widely assumed to be modulated by attention. In the present study, we investigated whether the processing of audiovisual distractors is also modulated by higher-order cognition. Participants fixated a visual distractor viewed via a centrally-placed mirror and responded to a laterally-presented audiovisual target. Critically, a distractor tone was presented from the same location as the mirror, while the visual distractor feature was presented at an occluded location, visible only indirectly via mirror reflection. Consequently, it appeared as though the visual and auditory features were presented from the same location though, in fact, they actually originated from different locations. Nevertheless, the results still revealed that the visual and auditory distractor features were processed together just as in the control condition, in which the audiovisual distractor features were both actually presented from fixation. Taken together, these results suggest that the processing of irrelevant multisensory information is not influenced by higher-order cognition.