title: Sound increases the saliency of visual events.
abstract: We show that concurrent auditory stimuli can enhance the visual system's ability to detect brief visual events. Participants indicated which of two visual stimuli was briefly blinked off. A spatially non-aligned auditory cue - simultaneous with the blink - significantly enhanced subjects' detection ability, while a visual cue decreased detection ability relative to a no-cue condition. Control experiments indicate that the auditory-driven enhancement was not attributable to a warning effect. Also, the enhancement did not depend on an exact temporal alignment of cue-target onsets or offsets. In combination, our results provide evidence that the sound-induced enhancement is not due to a sharpening of visual temporal responses or apparent prolongation of the visual event. Rather, this enhancement seems to reflect an increase in phenomenal visual saliency.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology II and Center for Advanced Imaging, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Leipziger Street 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. toemme@med.ovgu.de
authors.forename: Toemme
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Noesselt
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bergmann
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hake
authors.forename: Hans-Jochen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Heinze
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fendrich
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D001767:Blinking / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013016:Sound; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*