Abstract
The human attentional system can be subdivided into three functional networks of alerting, orienting, and executive control. Although these networks have been extensively studied in the visuospatial modality, whether the same mechanisms are deployed across different sensory modalities remains unclear. In this study we used the attention network test for the visuospatial modality, in addition to two auditory variants with spatial and frequency manipulations to examine cross-modal correlations between network functions. Results showed that among the visual and auditory tasks, the effects of executive control, but not effects of alerting and orienting, were significantly correlated. These findings suggest that while alerting and orienting functions rely more upon modality-specific processes, the executive control of attention coordinates complex behavior via supramodal mechanisms.
Highlights
The human brain receives enormous amounts of sensory stimuli from visual, auditory, and other sensory modalities
The alerting effect The alerting effect was significant for both reaction time (RT) [66 ± 26 ms, t(41) = 16.24, p < 0.001] and error rate [1.91 ± 4.84%, t(41) = 16.24, p < 0.001], indicating that participants were faster and more accurate in the double cue compared to the no cue condition
The orienting effect The orienting effect was significant for both RT [60 ± 32 ms; t(41) = 12.24; p < 0.001] and error rate [1.86 ± 4.31%; t(41) = 2.80; p < 0.01], indicating that participants were faster and more accurate in the valid cue condition compared to the double cue condition
Summary
The human brain receives enormous amounts of sensory stimuli from visual, auditory, and other sensory modalities. Considerable effort has been devoted to investigate whether the same attentional mechanisms are involved irrespective of modality of the stimuli (Spence et al, 2000; Spence, 2010), the existence of “supramodal” attentional functions remains unclear. This is primarily due to a lack of studies employing comparable visual and auditory attention tasks to examine the relationship of attentional effects across modalities (Spence and Driver, 1994; Zatorre et al, 1999; Salmi et al, 2007; Larson and Lee, 2014)
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