Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Multisensory Integration Lab, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Biological Psychology, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Kiel, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 1;8(1):11530. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30007-6.
The role of attentional processes in the integration of input from different sensory modalities is complex and multifaceted. Importantly, little is known about how simple, non-linguistic stimuli are integrated when the resources available for sensory processing are exhausted. We studied this question by examining multisensory integration under conditions of limited endogenous attentional resources. Multisensory integration was assessed through the sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI), in which a flash presented simultaneously with two short auditory beeps is often perceived as two flashes, while cognitive load was manipulated using an n-back task. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed that increased cognitive demands had a significant effect on the perception of the illusion while post-hoc tests showed that participants' illusion perception was increased when attentional resources were limited. Additional analysis demonstrated that this effect was not related to a response bias. These findings provide evidence that the integration of non-speech, audiovisual stimuli is enhanced under reduced attentional resources and it therefore supports the notion that top-down attentional control plays an essential role in multisensory integration.
注意过程在整合来自不同感觉模态的输入方面的作用是复杂和多方面的。重要的是，当用于感觉处理的资源耗尽时，对于如何整合简单的非语言刺激知之甚少。我们通过检查在有限的内源性注意资源条件下的多感觉整合来研究这个问题。多感觉整合通过声音诱导的闪光错觉（SIFI）进行评估，其中同时呈现闪光和两个短的听觉哔哔声通常被感知为两个闪光，而认知负荷通过 n 回任务来操纵。单向重复测量方差分析表明，认知需求的增加对错觉的感知有显著影响，事后检验表明，当注意力资源有限时，参与者的错觉感知增加。额外的分析表明，这种影响与反应偏差无关。这些发现提供了证据表明，在注意力资源减少的情况下，非言语、视听刺激的整合得到增强，因此支持了自上而下的注意力控制在多感觉整合中起着重要作用的观点。
