Selection for Action II: Multisensory Selection
Final Report Abstract
The goal of the project was to investigate selection processes in a multisensory setting. Our everyday experiences occur in a multisensory world; we constantly and simultaneously experience many different sensory events – we see a car driving by, listen to our colleague talking to us, or feel our smartphone ringing in our pocket, all while we have the intent to safely cross the street. Therefore, we have to select what information we want to attend to and which are currently not relevant for our actions. Hereby, previous research has mostly focussed on unisensory, especially visual selection. The investigation of these selection processes in crossmodal and truly multisensory situations was at the core of this project, in order to further our understanding and gain a more realistic perspective concerning selection in everyday situations. In the first phase of this project, the focus was on extending typical selection paradigms into non-visual, especially tactile setting, as well as investigated crossmodal influences on these unisensory selection processes. Hereby, we were able to evidence similar selection processes across the senses when selection was based on stimulus identity, but different selection processes when selection was based on spatial location. The second phase of this project focussed on truly multisensory selection, that is, selection between multisensory stimuli. Comparable to a car which can be seen, but also heard, we used stimuli which were defined by its specific combination of two sensory components. This allowed us to analyse the processing of multisensory target as well as distractor stimuli in a multisensory setting, and further investigate the role of attention for multisensory integration, still a hotly debated moderating influence in multisensory processing.
Publications
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(2014). The impact of the irrelevant: The task environment modulates the impact of irrelevant features in response selection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40, 2198-2213
Mast, F., & Frings, C.
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(2014). When vision influences the invisible distractor: Tactile response compatibility effects require vision. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40, 763-774
Wesslein, A. K., Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2015). Multisensory top-down sets: Evidence for contingent crossmodal capture. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 77, 1970-1985
Mast, F., Frings, C., & Spence, C.
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(2015). You can’t ignore what you can’t separate: the effect of visually induced target-distractor separation on tactile selection. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 728-736
Wesslein, A. K., Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2019). Multisensory feature integration in (and out) of the focus of spatial attention. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 82, 363-376
Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2019). Overt spatial attention modulates multisensory selection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45, 174-188
Jensen, A., Merz, S., Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2019).The impact of stimulus uncertainty on attentional control. Cognition, 183, 208-212
Frings, C., Merz, S., & Hommel, B.
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(2020). Higher-order cognition does not affect multisensory distractor processing. Multisensory Research, 34, 351-364
Merz, S., Jensen, A., Burau, C., Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2020). Interference of irrelevant information in multisensory selection depends on attentional set. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 117-1195
Jensen, A., Merz, S., Spence, C., & Frings, C.
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(2021). When irrelevant information helps: Extending the Eriksen-flanker task into a multisensory world. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83, 776-789
Merz, S., Frings, C., Spence, C
