Cross-Modal Control of Attention Shifts

Abstract

Abstract The study of the control of visual attention in space is one of the most exciting and rewarding directions of modern cognitive science re search, as the other chapters in this book amply demonstrate. However, the modern study of attention began in the auditory domain, and for many years much of what we learned about attention phenomena was learned in the context of processing of simple and complex auditory stimuli. Indeed, the early studies in the control of visual attention made frequent reference to comparable, or noncomparable, phenomena in other modalities, especially audition and touch (e.g., Posner, 1978). Yet by the mid-1980s, researchers’ attention had shifted to the visual do main, with dramatic results. These new understandings beg the question of whether similar systems exist in other modalities, and whether the other-modality systems share common operating principles, per haps even common brain areas, with those involved in the control of visual attention. This chapter summarizes much of what we know about the interaction of auditory and visual attention systems, including quite a bit of previously unpublished research. We conclude that there is indeed deep interaction between the mechanisms that control visual and auditory attention, and argue that a cross-modal approach promises a different and more generally useful view of attention mechanisms than does study of attention within any single modality.