Cross-modal exogenous visual selective attention

The study investigated cross-modal links for endogenous covert spatial orienting in vision and hearing. By comparing visual cues with auditory cues, the possibility of auditory cues to activate endogenous visual selective attention was examined. It was found that valid auditory cues came with inhibition rather than facilitation at SOA shorter than 500ms while valid visual cues showed significant facilitation even at 100ms SOA; at longer SOA, both cues showed facilitation. Results show there are separable modality-specific spatial-attention systems, but with links such that auditory orienting tends to result in visual orienting to the corresponding location in visual space.IUPsy