title: Spatiotemporal Relationships among Audiovisual Stimuli Modulate Auditory Facilitation of Visual Target Discrimination.
abstract: Sensory information is multimodal; through audiovisual interaction, task-irrelevant auditory stimuli tend to speed response times and increase visual perception accuracy. However, mechanisms underlying these performance enhancements have remained unclear. We hypothesize that task-irrelevant auditory stimuli might provide reliable temporal and spatial cues for visual target discrimination and behavioral response enhancement. Using signal detection theory, the present study investigated the effects of spatiotemporal relationships on auditory facilitation of visual target discrimination. Three experiments were conducted where an auditory stimulus maintained reliable temporal and/or spatial relationships with visual target stimuli. Results showed that perception sensitivity (d') to visual target stimuli was enhanced only when a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus maintained reliable spatiotemporal relationships with a visual target stimulus. When only reliable spatial or temporal information was contained, perception sensitivity was not enhanced. These results suggest that reliable spatiotemporal relationships between visual and auditory signals are required for audiovisual integration during a visual discrimination task, most likely due to a spread of attention. These results also indicate that auditory facilitation of visual target discrimination follows from late-stage cognitive processes rather than early stage sensory processes.
authors.affiliation: Brain Informatics Laboratory liqi@cust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Changchun University of Science and Technology, 7089 Weixing Road, Changchun 130022, China.
authors.forename: Huamin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Brain Informatics Laboratory.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan.
authors.forename: Jinglong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: audiovisual integration; signal detection theory; temporal and spatial reliability; visual detection