Abstract
Across three experiments, participants made speeded elevation discrimination responses to vibrotactile targets presented to the thumb (held in a lower position) or the index finger (upper position) of either hand, while simultaneously trying to ignore visual distractors presented independently from either the same or a different elevation. Performance on the vibrotactile elevation discrimination task was slower and less accurate when the visual distractor was incongruent with the elevation of the vibrotactile target (e.g., a lower light during the presentation of an upper vibrotactile target to the index finger) than when they were congruent, showing that people cannot completely ignore vision when selectively attending to vibrotactile information. We investigated the attentional, temporal, and spatial modulation of these cross-modal congruency effects by manipulating the direction of endogenous tactile spatial attention, the stimulus onset asynchrony between target and distractor, and the spatial separation between the vibrotactile target, any visual distractors, and the participant’s two hands within and across hemifields. Our results provide new insights into the spatiotemporal modulation of crossmodal congruency effects and highlight the utility of this paradigm for investigating the contributions of visual, tactile, and proprioceptive inputs to the multisensory representation of peripersonal space.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Austen, E. L., Soto-Faraco, S., Pinel, J. P. J., & Kingstone, A. F. (2001). Virtual body effect: Factors influencing visual-tactile integration. Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society, 6, 2.
Banich, M. T. (1998). The missing link: The role of interhemispheric interaction in attentional processing. Brain & Cognition, 36, 128–157.
Bertelson, P., & de Gelder, B. (2004). The psychology of multimodal perception. In C. Spence & J. Driver (Eds.), Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention (pp. 141–177). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Besner, D., & Stolz, J. A. (1999). What kind of attention modulates the Stroop effect? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 99–104.
Bolognini, N., Frassinetti, F., & Làdavas, E. (2003). Acoustical vision of below threshold stimuli: Interaction among spatially converging audio-visual inputs. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Bradshaw, J. L., Howard, M. J., Pierson, J. M., Phillips, J., & Bradshaw, J. A. (1992). Effects of expectancy and attention in vibrotactile choice reaction time tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A, 509–528.
Chan, J. S., Merrifield, K., & Spence, C. (2004). Auditory spatial attention assessed in a flanker interference task. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Chong, T., & Mattingley, J. B. (2000). Preserved cross-modal attentional links in the absence of conscious vision: Evidence from patients with primary visual cortex lesions [Abstract]. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(Suppl.), 38.
Coles, M. G. H., Gratton, G., Bashore, T. R., Eriksen, C. W., & Donchin, E. (1985). A psychophysiological investigation of the continuous flow model of human information processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 11, 529–553.
di Pellegrino, G., & Frassinetti, F. (2000). Direct evidence from parietal extinction of enhancement of visual attention near a visible hand. Current Biology, 10, 1475–1477.
di Pellegrino, G., Làdavas, E., & Farné, A. (1997). Seeing where your hands are. Nature, 388, 730.
Driver, J., & Grossenbacher, P. G. (1996). Multimodal spatial constraints on tactile selective attention. In T. Inui & J. L. McClelland (Eds.), Attention and performance XVI: Information integration in perception and communication (pp. 209–235). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Driver, J., & Spence, C. J. (1994). Spatial synergies between auditory and visual attention. In C. Umiltà & M. Moscovitch (Eds.), Attention and performance XV: Conscious and nonconscious information processing (pp. 311–331). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Driver, J., & Spence, C. (1998). Crossmodal links in spatial attention. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series B, 353, 1319–1331.
Driver, J., & Spence, C. (2004). Crossmodal spatial attention: Evidence from human performance. In C. Spence & J. Driver (Eds.), Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention (pp. 179–220). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duhamel, J.-R., Colby, C. L., & Goldberg, M. E. (1991). Congruent representations of visual and somatosensory space in single neurons of monkey intra-parietal cortex (area VIP). In J. Paillard (Ed.), Brain and space (pp. 223–236). New York: Oxford University Press.
Dyer, F. N. (1971). The duration of word meaning responses: Stroop interference for different preexposures of the word. Psychonomic Science, 25, 229–231.
Eimer, M. (2004). Electrophysiology of human crossmodal spatial attention. In C. Spence & J. Driver (Eds.), Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention (pp. 221–245). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eimer, M., & Driver, J. (2000). An event-related brain potential study of cross-modal links in spatial attention between vision and touch. Psychophysiology, 37, 697–705.
Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 143–149.
Eriksen, C. W., & Hoffman, J. E. (1972). Temporal and spatial characteristics of selective encoding from visual displays. Perception & Psychophysics, 12, 201–204.
Frassinetti, F., Bolognini, N., & Làdavas, E. (2002). Enhancement of visual perception by crossmodal visuo-auditory interaction. Experimental Brain Research, 147, 332–343.
Friedman, A., & Polson, M. C. (1981). Hemispheres as independent resource systems: Limited-capacity processing and cerebral specialization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 7, 1031–1058.
Graziano, M. S. A., & Botvinick, M. M. (2002). How the brain represents the body: Insights from neurophysiology and psychology. In W. Prinz & B. Hommel (Eds.), Common mechanisms in perception and action: Attention and performance XIX (pp. 136–157). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Groh, J. M., & Sparks, D. L. (1996). Saccades to somatosensory targets: 1. Behavioral characteristics. Journal of Neurophysiology, 75, 412–427.
Holmes, N., Calvert, C., & Spence, C. (2004). Does tool-use extend visuotactile peripersonal space? Evidence from the crossmodal congruency task. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Holmes, N., Crozier, G., & Spence, C. (2004). When mirrors lie: “Visual capture” of arm position impairs reaching performance. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 4, 194–201.
Holmes, N., & Spence, C. (2004). The body schema and the multisensory representation(s) of peripersonal space. Cognitive Processing, 5, 94–105.
Hommel, B. (1993a). Inverting the Simon effect by intention: Determinants of direction and extent of effects of irrelevant spatial information. Psychological Research, 55, 270–279.
Hommel, B. (1993b). The relationship between stimulus processing and response selection in the Simon task: Evidence for a temporal overlap. Psychological Research, 55, 280–290.
Howell, D. C. (1999). Fundamental statistics for the behavioural sciences. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury.
Jones, D. M., & Hapeshi, K. (1991). Final report of the contract: Information-processing under high workload. Army Personnel Research Establishment, Farnborough, U.K.
Kahneman, D., & Treisman, A. (1984). Changing views of attention and automaticity. In R. Parasuraman & D. R. Davies (Eds.), Varieties of attention (pp. 26–61). San Diego: Academic Press.
Kennett, S., Eimer, M., Spence, C., & Driver, J. (2001). Tactilevisual links in exogenous spatial attention under different postures: Convergent evidence from psychophysics and ERPs. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 462–478.
Kennett, S., Spence, C., & Driver, J. (2002). Visuo-tactile links in covert exogenous spatial attention remap across changes in unseen hand posture. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 1083–1094.
Kinsbourne, M., & Cook, J. (1971). Generalized and lateralized effects of concurrent verbalization on a unimanual skill. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 23, 341–345.
Kinsbourne, M., & Hicks, R. E. (1978). Functional cerebral space: A model for overflow, transfer and interference effects in human performance: A tutorial review. In J. Requin (Ed.), Attention and performance VII (pp. 345–362). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Làdavas, E. (2002). Functional and dynamic properties of visual peripersonal space. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 17–22.
Làdavas, E., & Farnè, A. (2004). Neuropsychological evidence for multimodal representations of space near specific body parts. In C. Spence & J. Driver (Eds.), Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention (pp. 69–98). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lloyd, D. M., Merat, N., McGlone, F., & Spence, C. (2003). Crossmodal links between audition and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 65, 901–924.
Lloyd, D. M., Shore, D. I., Spence, C., & Calvert, G. A. (2003). Multisensory representation of limb position in human premotor cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 17–18.
Lu, C.-H., & Procter, R. W. (1995). The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2, 174–207.
Maravita, A., Spence, C., & Driver, J. (2003). Multisensory integration and the body schema: Close to hand and within reach. Current Biology, 13, R531-R539.
Maravita, A., Spence, C., Kennett, S., & Driver, J. (2002). Tool-use changes multimodal spatial interactions between vision and touch in normal humans. Cognition, 83, B25-B34.
Maravita, A., Spence, C., Sergent, C., & Driver, J. (2002). Seeing your own touched hands in a mirror modulates cross-modal interactions. Psychological Science, 13, 350–356.
Marks, L. E. (2004). Cross-modal interactions in speeded classification. In G. Calvert, C. Spence, & B. E. Stein (Eds.), Handbook of multisensory processes (pp. 85–105). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Merat, N., Spence, C., Lloyd, D. M., Withington, D. J., & Mc-Glone, F. (1999). Audiotactile links in focused and divided spatial attention. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 25, 1417.
Merola, J. L., & Liederman, J. (1985). Developmental changes in hemispheric independence. Child Development, 56, 1184–1194.
Pashler, H. E. (1998). The psychology of attention. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Passarotti, A. M., Banich, M. T., Sood, R. K., & Wang, J. M. (2002). A generalized role of interhemispheric interaction under attentionally demanding conditions: Evidence from the auditory and tactile modality. Neuropsychologia, 40, 1082–1096.
Pavani, F., & Castiello, U. (2004). Binding personal and extrapersonal space through body shadows. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 13–14.
Pavani, F., Spence, C., & Driver, J. (2000). Visual capture of touch: Out-of-the-body experiences with rubber gloves. Psychological Science, 11, 353–359.
Pick, H. L., Jr., Warren, D. H., & Hay, J. C. (1969). Sensory conflict in judgments of spatial direction. Perception & Psychophysics, 6, 203–205.
Pierson, J. M., Bradshaw, J. L., Meyer, T. F., Howard, M. J., & Bradshaw, J. A. (1991). Direction of gaze during vibrotactile choice reaction time tasks. Neuropsychologia, 29, 925–928.
Posner, M. I. (1980). Orienting of attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 3–25.
Riggio, L., Gawryszewski, L. de G., & Umiltà, C. (1986). What is crossed in crossed-hand effect? Acta Psychologica, 62, 89–100.
Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (1997). The space around us. Science, 277, 190–191.
Rizzolatti, G. C., Scandolara, M., Matelli, M., & Gentilucci, M. (1981). Afferent properties of periarcuate neurons in macaque monkeys: II. Visual responses. Behavioural Brain Research, 2, 147–163.
Röder, B., Rösler, F., & Spence, C. (2004). Early vision impairs tactile perception in the blind. Current Biology, 14, 121–124.
Shore, D. I., Spry, E., & Spence, C. (2002). Confusing the mind by crossing the hands. Cognitive Brain Research, 14, 153–163.
Shore, D. I., Spry, E., & Spence, C. (2004). Spatial modulation of tactile temporal order judgments. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Soto-Faraco, S., Morein-Zamir, S., & Kingstone, A. (in press). On audiovisual spatial synergy: The fragility of the phenomenon. Perception & Psychophysics.
Soto-Faraco, S., Ronald, A., & Spence, C. (in press). Tactile selective attention and body posture: Assessing the contribution of vision and proprioception. Perception & Psychophysics.
Spence, C. (2001). Crossmodal attentional capture: A controversy resolved? In C. Folk & B. Gibson (Eds.), Attention, distraction and action: Multiple perspectives on attentional capture (pp. 231–262). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
Spence, C. (2002). Multimodal attention and tactile informationprocessing. Behavioural Brain Research, 135, 57–64.
Spence, C., Baddeley, R., Zampini, M., James, R., & Shore, D. I. (2003). Multisensory temporal order judgments: When two locations are better than one. Perception & Psychophysics, 65, 318–328.
Spence, C., & Driver, J. (1996). Audiovisual links in endogenous covert spatial attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 22, 1005–1030.
Spence, C., & Driver, J. (1997). Audiovisual links in exogenous covert spatial orienting. Perception & Psychophysics, 59, 1–22.
Spence, C., & Driver, J. (Eds.) (2004). Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spence, C., Kingstone, A., Shore, D. I., & Gazzaniga, M. S. (2001). Representation of visuotactile space in the split brain. Psychological Science, 12, 90–93.
Spence, C., McDonald, J., & Driver, J. (2004). Exogenous spatialcuing studies of human crossmodal attention and multisensory integration. In C. Spence & J. Driver (Eds.), Crossmodal space and crossmodal attention (pp. 277–320). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spence, C., Pavani, F., & Driver, J. (1998). What crossing the hands can reveal about crossmodal links in spatial attention. Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society, 3, 13.
Spence, C., Pavani, F., & Driver, J. (2000). Crossmodal links between vision and touch in covert endogenous spatial attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 26, 1298–1319.
Spence, C., Ranson, J., & Driver, J. (2000). Cross-modal selective attention: On the difficulty of ignoring sounds at the locus of visual attention. Perception & Psychophysics, 62, 410–424.
Spence, C., Shore, D. I., Gazzaniga, M. S., Soto-Faraco, S., & Kingstone, A. (2001). Failure to remap visuotactile space across the midline in the split-brain. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55, 135–142.
Spence, C., Shore, D. I., & Klein, R. M. (2001). Multisensory prior entry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 799–832.
Stein, B. E., & Meredith, M. A. (1993). The merging of the senses. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Townsend, J. T., & Ashby, F. G. (1983). Stochastic modelling of elementary psychological processes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Walton, M., & Spence, C. (2004). Cross-modal congruency and visual capture in a visual elevation discrimination task. Experimental Brain Research, 154, 113–120.
Yamamoto, S., & Kitazawa, S. (2001). Reversal of subjective temporal order due to arm crossing. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 759–765.
Yantis, S. (1996). Attentional capture in vision. In A. F. Kramer, M. G.Coles, & G. D. Logan (Eds.), Converging operations in the study of visual selective attention (pp. 45–76). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Yantis, S. (2000). Goal-directed and stimulus-driven determinants of attentional control. In S. Monsell & J. Driver (Eds.), Control of cognitive processes: Attention and performance XVIII (pp. 73–103). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Spence, C., Pavani, F. & Driver, J. Spatial constraints on visual-tactile cross-modal distractor congruency effects. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 4, 148–169 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.4.2.148
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.4.2.148