Year: 2024
Type: preprint
Abstract: In visual contexts, the role of semantics in guiding attentional prioritization is well established, but how semantic information shapes attention in multisensory, rather than unisensory, contexts has been less well characterized. Task-irrelevant sounds can speed search for matched visual targets; e.g., you find a dog more quickly if you hear it barking. However, matched sounds and images may be a unique case, with the attentional benefit derived by integration into a combined multisensory event. To establish if semantic processing influences attention in audiovisual contexts, we systematically varied sound-image semantic relatedness while participants searched for target images. Search speed scaled with sound-image semantic relatedness, such that target images were found faster when the sound was more closely related to the image. These results demonstrate semantic knowledge guides audiovisual attention, even when task-irrelevant and not matched, suggesting a robust underlying cognitive mechanism processing semantics both within and across sensory modality.
Institutions: George Washington University, University of East Anglia
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4391144281