See an object, hear an object file: Object correspondence transcends sensory modality

An important task of perceptual processing is to parse incoming information into distinct units and to keep track of those units over time as the same, persisting representations. Within the study of visual perception, maintaining such persisting object representations is helped by "object files"-episodic representations that store (and update) information about objects' properties and track objects over time and motion via spatiotemporal information. Although object files are typically discussed as visual, here we demonstrate that object-file correspondence can be computed across sensory modalities. An object file can be initially formed with visual input and later accessed with corresponding auditory information, suggesting that object files may be able to operate at a multimodal level of perceptual processing. © 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business