Cox Dustin, Hong Sang Wook
Department of Psychology, College of Science, Florida Atlantic University , Boca Raton, FL, USA.
Front Psychol. 2015 Jun 2;6:722. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00722. eCollection 2015.
To reveal the mechanisms underpinning the influence of auditory input on visual awareness, we examine, (1) whether purely semantic-based multisensory integration facilitates the access to visual awareness for familiar visual events, and (2) whether crossmodal semantic priming is the mechanism responsible for the semantic auditory influence on visual awareness. Using continuous flash suppression, we rendered dynamic and familiar visual events (e.g., a video clip of an approaching train) inaccessible to visual awareness. We manipulated the semantic auditory context of the videos by concurrently pairing them with a semantically matching soundtrack (congruent audiovisual condition), a semantically non-matching soundtrack (incongruent audiovisual condition), or with no soundtrack (neutral video-only condition). We found that participants identified the suppressed visual events significantly faster (an earlier breakup of suppression) in the congruent audiovisual condition compared to the incongruent audiovisual condition and video-only condition. However, this facilitatory influence of semantic auditory input was only observed when audiovisual stimulation co-occurred. Our results suggest that the enhanced visual processing with a semantically congruent auditory input occurs due to audiovisual crossmodal processing rather than semantic priming, which may occur even when visual information is not available to visual awareness.
为揭示听觉输入对视觉意识产生影响的潜在机制，我们研究了：（1）基于纯粹语义的多感官整合是否有助于熟悉的视觉事件进入视觉意识；（2）跨模态语义启动是否是语义听觉对视觉意识产生影响的机制。我们使用持续闪光抑制，使动态且熟悉的视觉事件（如一列驶来火车的视频片段）无法进入视觉意识。我们通过将视频与语义匹配的音轨（视听一致条件）、语义不匹配的音轨（视听不一致条件）或无音轨（仅视频的中性条件）同时配对，来操纵视频的语义听觉背景。我们发现，与视听不一致条件和仅视频条件相比，在视听一致条件下参与者能显著更快地识别被抑制的视觉事件（抑制的更早解除）。然而，语义听觉输入的这种促进作用仅在视听刺激同时出现时才被观察到。我们的结果表明，语义一致的听觉输入增强视觉处理是由于视听跨模态处理而非语义启动，语义启动即使在视觉信息无法进入视觉意识时也可能发生。
