Cross-modal stimulus conflict: the behavioral effects of stimulus input timing in a visual-auditory Stroop task.
Abstract
Cross-modal processing depends strongly on the compatibility between different sensory
inputs, the relative timing of their arrival to brain processing components, and on
how attention is allocated. In this behavioral study, we employed a cross-modal audio-visual
Stroop task in which we manipulated the within-trial stimulus-onset-asynchronies (SOAs)
of the stimulus-component inputs, the grouping of the SOAs (blocked vs. random), the
attended modality (auditory or visual), and the congruency of the Stroop color-word
stimuli (congruent, incongruent, neutral) to assess how these factors interact within
a multisensory context. One main result was that visual distractors produced larger
incongruency effects on auditory targets than vice versa. Moreover, as revealed by
both overall shorter response times (RTs) and relative shifts in the psychometric
incongruency-effect functions, visual-information processing was faster and produced
stronger and longer-lasting incongruency effects than did auditory. When attending
to either modality, stimulus incongruency from the other modality interacted with
SOA, yielding larger effects when the irrelevant distractor occurred prior to the
attended target, but no interaction with SOA grouping. Finally, relative to neutral-stimuli,
and across the wide range of the SOAs employed, congruency led to substantially more
behavioral facilitation than did incongruency to interference, in contrast to findings
that within-modality stimulus-compatibility effects tend to be more evenly split between
facilitation and interference. In sum, the present findings reveal several key characteristics
of how we process the stimulus compatibility of cross-modal sensory inputs, reflecting
stimulus processing patterns that are critical for successfully navigating our complex
multisensory world.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Acoustic StimulationAuditory Perception
Behavior
Female
Humans
Male
Models, Neurological
Photic Stimulation
Psychometrics
Reaction Time
Stroop Test
Visual Perception
Young Adult
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13528Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pone.0062802Publication Info
Donohue, Sarah E; Appelbaum, Lawrence G; Park, Christina J; Roberts, Kenneth C; &
Woldorff, Marty G (2013). Cross-modal stimulus conflict: the behavioral effects of stimulus input timing in
a visual-auditory Stroop task. PLoS One, 8(4). pp. e62802. 10.1371/journal.pone.0062802. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13528.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Lawrence Gregory Appelbaum
Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Greg Appelbaum is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences in the Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Appelbaum's research
interests primarily concern the brain mechanisms underlying visual cognition, how
these capabilities differ among individuals, and how they can be improved through
behavioral, neurofeedback, and neuromodulation interventions. Within the field of
cognitive neuroscience, his research has addressed visual pe
Kenneth Roberts
Associate In Research
Marty G. Woldorff
Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Woldorff's main research interest is in the cognitive neuroscience of attention.
At each and every moment of our lives, we are bombarded by a welter of sensory information
coming at us from a myriad of directions and through our various sensory modalities
-- much more than we can fully process. We must continuously select and extract the
most important information from this welter of sensory inputs. How the human brain
accomplishes this is one of the core challenges of modern cognitive neuro
Alphabetical list of authors with Scholars@Duke profiles.

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