title: Auditory Stimulus Detection Partially Depends on Visuospatial Attentional Resources.
abstract: Humans' ability to detect relevant sensory information while being engaged in a demanding task is crucial in daily life. Yet, limited attentional resources restrict information processing. To date, it is still debated whether there are distinct pools of attentional resources for each sensory modality and to what extent the process of multisensory integration is dependent on attentional resources. We addressed these two questions using a dual task paradigm. Specifically, participants performed a multiple object tracking task and a detection task either separately or simultaneously. In the detection task, participants were required to detect visual, auditory, or audiovisual stimuli at varying stimulus intensities that were adjusted using a staircase procedure. We found that tasks significantly interfered. However, the interference was about 50% lower when tasks were performed in separate sensory modalities than in the same sensory modality, suggesting that attentional resources are partly shared. Moreover, we found that perceptual sensitivities were significantly improved for audiovisual stimuli relative to unisensory stimuli regardless of whether attentional resources were diverted to the multiple object tracking task or not. Overall, the present study supports the view that attentional resource allocation in multisensory processing is task-dependent and suggests that multisensory benefits are not dependent on attentional resources.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.
authors.forename: Basil
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wahn
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.
authors.forename: Supriya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Murali
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sinnett
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany; Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: König
keywords: attentional resources; audition; load theory; multiple object tracking; multisensory integration; multisensory processing; vision