Cross‐modal decoupling in temporal attention

Abstract

Prior studies have repeatedly reported behavioural benefits to events occurring at attended, compared to unattended, points in time. It has been suggested that, as for spatial orienting, temporal orienting of attention spreads across sensory modalities in a synergistic fashion. However, the consequences of cross-modal temporal orienting of attention remain poorly understood. One challenge is that the passage of time leads to an increase in event predictability throughout a trial, thus making it difficult to interpret possible effects (or lack thereof). Here we used a design that avoids complete temporal predictability to investigate whether attending to a sensory modality (vision or touch) at a point in time confers beneficial access to events in the other, non-attended, sensory modality (touch or vision, respectively). In contrast to previous studies and to what happens with spatial attention, we found that events in one (unattended) modality do not automatically benefit from happening at the time point when another modality is expected. Instead, it seems that attention can be deployed in time with relative independence for different sensory modalities. Based on these findings, we argue that temporal orienting of attention can be cross-modally decoupled in order to flexibly react according to the environmental demands, and that the efficiency of this selective decoupling unfolds in time.

Temporal expectancies and rhythmic cueing in touch: The influence of spatial attention

“…Moreover, parallels can also be drawn to a study where participants were cued to expect either a visual or tactile target at a specific time point. Mühlberg, Oriolo, and Soto-Faraco (2014) showed that attending to one modality did not benefit the second, unattended modality, at the expected time point. That is, endogenous temporal attention can be deployed relatively independently across modalities (c.f.…”

Cross-modal decoupling in temporal attention between audition and touch

“…Instead, most targets presented at the unexpected time point belonged to the secondary, less frequent, modality. Hence, Lange and Röder's experiment design (followed by Mühlberg et al's 2014, and the present study) used a probabilistic manipulation, with the general assumption that manipulations of expectancy can induce corresponding orienting of top-down attention (see Correa et al, 2005;Nobre & Rohenkohl, 2014). Attention and expectation are technically dissociable processes, with different expressions in terms of brain correlates Summerfield & Egner, 2009), but have hardly distinguishable behavioural outcomes.…”

“…Driver & Spence, 1994;Eimer & Driver, 2000;Eimer et al, 2002;Eimer, 1999;Macaluso & Driver, 2005;Macaluso et al, 2000;Macaluso, 2010;Sambo & Forster, 2011;Santangelo et al, 2010;Spence & Driver, 1997, 1996Spence et al, 2000;Tang et al, 2015;Trenner et al, 2008). However, in contrast to spatial attention, the consequences of cross-modal orienting in time have been far less studied and the interpretation of the results is still controversial Mühlberg et al, 2014). conducted a relevant study that addresses the question of orienting temporal attention in a cross-modal environment.…”

Temporal expectation weights visual signals over auditory signals

“…Prior research has also shown that the effect of temporal expectation can be either modality-specific (facilitation at the expected time only for a behavioral target in the expected modality) or modality-independent (facilitation at the expected time for a behavioral target in either an expected or an unexpected modality), depending on the pairing of sensory modalities and other stimulus factors (e.g., Mühlberg et al, 2014). However, no prior study has investigated how temporal expectation might influence crossmodal interactions using multimodal stimuli, despite the fact that crossmodal integration crucially depends on timing (e.g., Holmes & Spence, 2005).…”

“…This result suggests that temporal expectation facilitates perceptual processing independently of modality. However, using a similar experimental design with visual and tactile stimuli, Mühlberg, Oriolo, and Soto-Faraco (2014) showed that, whereas the processing of stimuli in the expected modality benefited from occurring at the expected time, as indicated by faster responses, the processing of stimuli in the unexpected modality did not. This result suggests that temporal expectation facilitates perceptual processing in a modality-specific manner.…”