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The biases affecting people's perception of dynamic stimuli are typically robust and strong for specific stimulus configurations. For example, representational momentum describes a systematic perceptual bias in the direction of motion for the final location of a moving stimulus. Under clearly defined stimulus configurations (e.g., specific stimulus identity, size, speed), for example, the frequently used "implied motion" trial sequence, for which a target is subsequently presented in a consistent direction and with a consistent speed, a displacement in motion direction is evidenced. The present study explores the potential influence of expectations regarding directional as well as speed consistencies on representational momentum, elicited by including other, inconsistently moving trial types within the same experimental block. A systematic representational momentum effect was observed when only consistent motion trials were presented. In contrast, when inconsistent target motion trials were mixed within the same block of experimental trials, the representational momentum effect decreased, or was even eliminated (Experiments 1 & 2). Detailed analysis indicated that this reflects a global (proportion of consistent and inconsistent motion trials within a particular experimental block), not local (preceding trial influencing actual trial) effect. Yet, additional follow-up studies (Experiments 3 & 4) support the idea that these changes in perceived location are strongly influenced by the overall stimulus speed statistics in the different experimental blocks. These results are discussed and interpreted in light of recent theoretical developments in the literature on motion perception that highlight the importance of expectations about stimulus speed for motion perception., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Top-down control over stimulus-driven attentional capture, as postulated by the contingent capture hypothesis, has been a topic of lively scientific debate for a number of years now. According to the latter hypothesis, a stimulus has to match the feature of a top-down established control set in order to be selected automatically. Today, research on the topic of contingent capture has focused mostly on the manipulation of only a single feature separating the target from the distractors (the selection feature). The research presented here examined the compilation of top-down attentional control sets having multiple selection features. We report three experiments in which the feature overlap between the distractor and the top-down sets was manipulated on different perceptual features (e.g., colour, orientation and location). Distractors could match three, two or one of the features of the top-down sets. In line with our hypotheses, the strength of the distractor interference effects decreased linearly as the feature overlap between the distractor and the participants' top-down sets decreased. These results therefore suggest a decline in the efficiency with which distractors involuntarily capture attention as the target-similarity decreases. The data support the idea of multi-feature attentional control sets and are discussed in light of prominent contemporary theories of visual attention., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Roughness is a perceptual attribute typically associated with certain stimuli that are presented in one of the spatial senses. In auditory research, the term is typically used to describe the harsh effects that are induced by particular sound qualities (i.e., dissonance) and human/animal vocalizations (e.g., screams, distress cries). In the tactile domain, roughness is a crucial factor determining the perceptual features of a surface. The same feature can also be ascertained visually, by means of the extraction of pattern features that determine the haptic quality of surfaces, such as grain size and density. By contrast, the term roughness has rarely been applied to the description of those stimuli perceived via the chemical senses. In this review, we take a critical look at the putative meaning(s) of the term roughness, when used in both unisensory and multisensory contexts, in an attempt to answer two key questions: (1) Is the use of the term 'roughness' the same in each modality when considered individually? and (2) Do crossmodal correspondences involving roughness match distinct perceptual features or (at least on certain occasions) do they merely pick-up on an amodal property? We start by examining the use of the term in the auditory domain. Next, we summarize the ways in which the term roughness has been used in the literature on tactile and visual perception, and in the domain of olfaction and gustation. Then, we move on to the crossmodal context, reviewing the literature on the perception of roughness in the audiovisual, audiotactile, and auditory-gustatory/olfactory domains. Finally, we highlight some limitations of the reviewed literature and we outline a number of key directions for future empirical research in roughness perception., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

A shape-label matching task is commonly used to examine the self-advantage in motor reaction-time responses (the Self-Prioritization Effect; SPE). In the present study, auditory labels were introduced, and, for the first time, responses to unisensory auditory, unisensory visual, and multisensory object-label stimuli were compared across block-type (i.e., trials blocked by sensory modality type, and intermixed trials of unisensory and multisensory stimuli). Auditory stimulus intensity was presented at either 50 dB (Group 1) or 70 dB (Group 2). The participants in Group 2 also completed a multisensory detection task, making simple speeded motor responses to the shape and sound stimuli and their multisensory combinations. In the matching task, the SPE was diminished in intermixed trials, and in responses to the unisensory auditory stimuli as compared with the multisensory (visual shape+auditory label) stimuli. In contrast, the SPE did not differ in responses to the unisensory visual and multisensory (auditory object+visual label) stimuli. The matching task was associated with multisensory 'costs' rather than gains, but response times to self- versus stranger-associated stimuli were differentially affected by the type of multisensory stimulus (auditory object+visual label or visual shape+auditory label). The SPE was thus modulated both by block-type and the combination of object and label stimulus modalities. There was no SPE in the detection task. Taken together, these findings suggest that the SPE with unisensory and multisensory stimuli is modulated by both stimulus- and task-related parameters within the matching task. The SPE does not transfer to a significant motor speed gain when the self-associations are not task-relevant., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

A wealth of recent research supports the validity of the Self-Prioritization Effect (SPE)-the performance advantage for responses to self-associated as compared with other-person-associated stimuli in a shape-label matching task. However, inconsistent findings have been reported regarding the particular stage(s) of information processing that are influenced. In one account, self-prioritization modulates multiple stages of processing, whereas according to a competing account, self-prioritization is driven solely by a modulation in central-stage information-processing. To decide between these two possibilities, the present study tested whether the self-advantage in arm movements previously reported could reflect a response bias using visual feedback (Experiment 1), or approach motivation processes (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 1, visual feedback was occluded in a ballistic movement-time variant of the matching task, whereas in Experiment 2, task responses were directed away from the stimuli and the participant's body. The advantage for self in arm-movement responses emerged in both experiments. The findings indicate that the self-advantage in arm-movement responses does not depend on the use of visual feedback or on a self/stimuli-directed response. They further indicate that self-relevance can modulate movement responses (predominantly) using proprioceptive, kinaesthetic, and tactile information. These findings support the view that self-relevance modulates arm-movement responses, countering the suggestion that self-prioritization only influences central-stage processes, and consistent with a multiple-stage influence instead., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

The perception of dynamic objects is sometimes biased. For example, localizing a moving object after it has disappeared results in a perceptual shift in the direction of motion, a bias known as representational momentum. We investigated whether the temporal characteristics of an irrelevant, spatially uninformative vibrotactile stimulus bias the perceived location of a visual target. In two visuotactile experiments, participants judged the final location of a dynamic, visual target. Simultaneously, a continuous (starting with the onset of the visual target, Experiments 1 and 2) or brief (33-ms stimulation, Experiment 2) vibrotactile stimulus (at the palm of participant's hands) was presented, and the offset disparity between the visual target and tactile stimulation was systematically varied. The results indicate a cross-modal influence of tactile stimulation on the perceived final location of the visual target. Closer inspection of the nature of this cross-modal influence, observed here for the first time, reveals that the vibrotactile stimulus was likely just taken as a temporal cue regarding the offset of the visual target, but no strong interaction and combined processing of the two stimuli occurred. The present results are related to similar cross-modal temporal illusions and current accounts of multisensory perception, integration, and cross-modal facilitation.

Estimating rates of public benefit use for lawful permanent residents (LPRs) is difficult given the limited availability of nationally representative data that disaggregate the foreign-born population by legal status. Using the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation-the only national survey that distinguishes LPRs from other non-citizens-we employ logistic regression to compare estimates of health insurance coverage for legal immigrants using two methods to infer legal status: (1) a logical approach and (2) a survey-based approach. The logical approach, relative to the survey approach, yields a higher predicted probability of having any insurance for LPRs (adjPP = 0.70) compared to the survey approach (adjPP = 0.57) and a higher likelihood of having public health insurance (adjPP = 0.26 compared to adjPP = 0.09, respectively). These findings suggest that the logical approach may overestimate lawful immigrants' reliance on public benefits, which has implications for conclusions about recent changes to the public charge rule.

Charles W. Eriksen (1923-2018), long-time editor of Perception & Psychophysics (1971-1993) - the precursor to the present journal - undoubtedly made a profound contribution to the study of selective attention in the visual modality. Working primarily with neurologically normal adults, his early research provided both theoretical accounts for behavioral phenomena as well as robust experimental tasks, including the well-known Eriksen flanker task. The latter paradigm has been used and adapted by many researchers over the subsequent decades. While Eriksen's research interests were primarily focused on situations of unimodal visual spatially selective attention, here I review evidence from those studies that have attempted to extend Eriksen's general approach to non-visual (i.e., auditory and tactile) selection and the more realistic situations of multisensory spatial attentional selection.

Charles W. Eriksen dedicated much of his research career to the field of cognitive psychology, investigating human information processing in those situations that required selection between competing stimuli. Together with his wife Barbara, he introduced the flanker task, which became one of the standard experimental tasks used by researchers to investigate the mechanisms underpinning selection. Although Eriksen himself was primarily interested in investigating visual selection, the flanker task was eventually adapted by other researchers to investigate human information processing and selection in a variety of nonvisual and multisensory situations. Here, we discuss the core aspects of the flanker task and interpret the evidence of the flanker task when used in crossmodal and multisensory settings. "Selection" has been a core topic of psychology for nearly 120 years. Nowadays, though, it is clear that we need to look at selection from a multisensory perspective-the flanker task, at least in its crossmodal and multisensory variants, is an important tool with which to investigate selection, attention, and multisensory information processing.

After an object disappears, the vanishing point is shifted in the direction of motion, a phenomenon known as representational momentum. The present study focused on the relationship between motion information and spatial location in a crossmodal setting. In two visuotactile experiments, we studied how motion information in one sensory modality affects the perceived final location of a motion signal (congruent vs. incongruent left-right motion direction) in another modality. The results revealed a unidirectional crossmodal influence of motion information on spatial localization performance. While visual motion information influenced the perceived final location of the tactile stimulus, tactile motion information had no influence on visual localization. These results therefore extend the existing literature on crossmodal influences on spatial location and are discussed in relation to current theories of multisensory perception.

In the multisensory world in which we live, certain objects and events are of more relevance than others. In the laboratory, this broadly equates to the distinction between targets and distractors. In selection situations like the flanker task, the evidence suggests that the processing of multisensory distractors is influenced by attention. Here, multisensory distractor processing was investigated by modulating attentional set in three experiments in a flanker interference task, in which the targets were unisensory while the distractors were multisensory. Attentional set was modulated by making the target modality either predictable or unpredictable (Experiments 1 vs. 2, respectively). In Experiment 3, this manipulation was implemented on a within-experiment basis. Furthermore, the third experiment compared audiovisual distractors (used in all experiments) with distractors with one feature in a neutral modality (i.e., touch), that never appeared as the target modality in the flanker task. The results demonstrate that there was no interference from the response-compatible crossmodal distractor feature when the target modality was predictable (i.e., blocked). However, when the modality was varied on a trial-by-trial basis, this crossmodal feature significantly influenced information processing. By contrast, a multisensory distractor with a neutral crossmodal feature never influenced behavior. This finding suggests that the processing of multisensory distractors depends on attentional set. When the target modality varies randomly, participants include features from both modalities in their attentional set and the irrelevant crossmodal feature, now part of the set, influences information processing. In contrast, interference from the crossmodal distractor feature does not occur when it is not part of the attentional set.

When repeatedly exposed to simultaneously presented stimuli, associations between these stimuli are nearly always established, both within as well as between sensory modalities. Such associations guide our subsequent actions and may also play a role in multisensory selection. Thus, crossmodal associations (i.e., associations between stimuli from different modalities) learned in a multisensory interference task might affect subsequent information processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the processing level of multisensory stimuli in multisensory selection by means of crossmodal aftereffects. Either feature or response associations were induced in a multisensory flanker task while the amount of interference in a subsequent crossmodal flanker task was measured. The results of Experiment 1 revealed the existence of crossmodal interference after multisensory selection. Experiments 2 and 3 then went on to demonstrate the dependence of this effect on the perceptual associations between features themselves, rather than on the associations between feature and response. Establishing response associations did not lead to a subsequent crossmodal interference effect (Experiment 2), while stimulus feature associations without response associations (obtained by changing the response effectors) did (Experiment 3). Taken together, this pattern of results suggests that associations in multisensory selection, and the interference of (crossmodal) distractors, predominantly work at the perceptual, rather than at the response, level.

Anne Treisman transformed the way in which we think about visual feature integration. However, that does not mean that she was necessarily right, nor that she looked much beyond vision when considering how features might be bound together into perceptual objects. While such a narrow focus undoubtedly makes sense, given the complexity of human multisensory information processing, it is nevertheless somewhat surprising to find that Treisman herself never extended her feature integration theory outside of the visual modality. After all, she first cut her 'attentional teeth' thinking about problems of auditory and audiovisual selective attention. In this article, we review the literature concerning feature integration beyond the visual modality, concentrating, in particular, on the integration of features from different sensory modalities. We highlight a number of the challenges, as far as any straightforward attempt to extend feature integration to the non-visual (i.e. auditory and tactile) and cross-modal (or multisensory) cases, is concerned. These challenges include the problem of how basic features should be defined, the question of whether it even makes sense to talk of objects of perception in the auditory and olfactory modalities, the possibility of integration outside of the focus of spatial attention, and the integration of features from different sensory modalities in the control of action. Nevertheless, despite such limitations, Treisman's feature integration theory still stands as the standard approach against which alternatives are assessed, be it in the visual case or, increasingly, beyond.

We report two experiments designed to investigate how the implied motion of tactile stimuli influences perceived location. Predicting the location of sensory input is especially important as far as the perception of, and interaction with, the external world is concerned. Using two different experimental approaches, an overall pattern of localization shifts analogous to what has been described previously in the visual and auditory modalities is reported. That is, participants perceive the last location of a dynamic stimulus further along its trajectory than is objectively the case. In Experiment 1, participants judged whether the last vibration in a sequence of three was located closer to the wrist or to the elbow. In Experiment 2, they indicated the last location on a ruler attached to their forearm. We further pinpoint the effects of implied motion on tactile localization by investigating the independent influences of motion direction and perceptual uncertainty. Taken together, these findings underline the importance of dynamic information in localizing tactile stimuli on the skin.

Despite the rapid growth of research on the crossmodal correspondence between visually presented shapes and basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty), most studies that have been published to date have focused on shape contour (roundness/angularity). Meanwhile, other important features, such as symmetry, as well as the underlying mechanisms of the shape-taste correspondence, have rarely been studied. Over two experiments, we systematically manipulated the symmetry and contours of shapes and measured the influences of these variables on shape-taste correspondences. Furthermore, we investigated a potential underlying mechanism, based on the common affective appraisal of stimuli in different sensory modalities. We replicated the results of previous studies showing that round shapes are associated with sweet taste, whereas angular shapes are associated with sour and bitter tastes. In addition, we demonstrated a novel effect that the symmetry group of a shape influences how it is associated with taste. A significant relationship was observed between the taste and appraisal scores of the shapes, suggesting that the affective factors of pleasantness and threat underlie the shape-taste correspondence. These results were consistent across cultures, when we compared participants from Taiwanese and Western (UK, US, Canada) cultures. Our findings highlight that perceived pleasantness and threat are culturally common factors involved in at least some crossmodal correspondences.

Crossmodal correspondences have often been demonstrated using congruency effects between pairs of stimuli in different sensory modalities that vary along separate dimensions. To date, however, it is still unclear the extent to which these correspondences are relative versus absolute in nature: that is, whether they result from pre-defined values that rigidly link the two dimensions or rather result from flexible values related to the previous occurrence of the crossmodal stimuli. Here, we investigated this issue in a speeded classification task featuring the correspondence between auditory pitch and visual size (e.g., congruent correspondence between high pitch/small disc and low pitch/large disc). Participants classified the size of the visual stimuli (large vs. small) while hearing concurrent high- or low-pitched task-irrelevant sounds. On some trials, visual stimuli were paired instead with "intermediate" pitch, that could be interpreted differently according to the auditory stimulus on the preceding trial (i.e., as "lower" following the presentation of a high pitch tone, but as "higher" following the presentation of a low pitch tone). Performance on sequence-congruent trials (e.g., when a small disc paired with the intermediate-pitched tone was preceded by a low pitch tone) was compared to sequence-incongruent trials (e.g., when a small disc paired with the intermediate-pitch tone was by a high-pitched tone). The results revealed faster classification responses on sequence-congruent than on sequence-incongruent trials. This demonstrates that the effect of the pitch/size correspondence is relative in nature, and subjected to trial-by-trial interpretation of the stimulus pair.

We examined audiovisual and visuotactile integration in the central and peripheral visual field using visual fission and fusion illusions induced by sounds or taps. The fission illusion occurs when a single flash is perceived as two flashes if paired with two beeps or taps; the fusion illusion, by contrast, occurs when two flashes are perceived as a single flash if the flashes are paired with a single beep or tap. Beeps and taps induced similar patterns of illusions: the fission illusion was larger in the periphery than in the center, whereas the fusion illusion was larger in the center than in the periphery. An analysis based on signal detection theory revealed that both a decline in discriminability and a shift in criterion were associated with the more pronounced fission induced by sounds in the periphery. In contrast, only a shift in criterion was associated with the larger fission induced by taps in the periphery, and the larger fusion induced by a sound or tap in the center. To accommodate these findings, two accounts are proposed: audiovisual signals are more likely to be integrated in peripheral than in central vision, and the interpretation of visual signals favors discontinuous percepts, especially in the periphery.

Spatial negative priming (SNP) refers to the finding that responses to stimuli that are presented from previously ignored locations are slowed relative to responses to stimuli presented from previously unstimulated locations. To date, this effect has been demonstrated in vision, audition, and touch. Importantly, however, the cognitive processes involved differ between vision and audition. Although SNP is attributable to feature mismatch in the auditory modality, it is primarily caused by response inhibition in vision. To date, the locus of SNP in touch has not been established, though recently it has been shown that tactile SNP is not modulated by feature mismatch. Here, we demonstrate that in touch, as compared to vision and audition, SNP is more sensitive to the location features-and not solely to the response and stimulus features. Thus, in stark contrast to identity-based negative priming, in which responses to previously ignored stimuli (based on the stimulus identity) can be explained by the same mechanisms in all three sensory modalities, SNP would appear to be caused by different processes in each sensory modality, thus suggesting that the processing of the spatial properties of distractors is modality-specific.

Numerous studies that have investigated visual selective attention have demonstrated that a salient but task-irrelevant stimulus can involuntarily capture a participant's attention. Over the years, a lively debate has erupted concerning the impact of contingent top-down control settings on such stimulus-driven attentional capture. In the research reported here, we investigated whether top-down sets would also affect participants' performance in a multisensory task setting. A nonspatial compatibility task was used, in which the target and the distractor were always presented sequentially from the same spatial location. We manipulated target-distractor similarity by varying the visual and tactile features of the stimuli. Participants always responded to the visual target features (color); the tactile features were incorporated into the participants' top-down set only when the experimental context allowed for the tactile feature to be used in order to discriminate the target from the distractor. Larger compatibility effects after bimodal distractors were observed only when the participants were searching for a bimodal target and when tactile information was useful. Taken together, these results provide the first demonstration of nonspatial contingent crossmodal capture.

Negative priming (NP) refers to fact that people respond more slowly and make more errors when responding to target stimuli that were previously ignored. This phenomenon has also been observed when participants respond to the location, and not only to the identity, of the stimulus. Intriguingly, while roughly the same pattern of results has been observed in the visual, auditory, and tactile modalities when it comes to identity-based NP, the same does not hold true for spatial NP: In particular, feature mismatch seems to be the sole cause of auditory spatial NP, whereas response inhibition would appear to be the sole cause of spatial NP in vision. We conducted a novel tactile variant of the spatial NP task. We investigated whether spatial NP in the tactile modality exists, and further, we investigated whether the pattern of spatial NP in the tactile modality compares with what has been documented previously in vision or audition. Tactile spatial NP was observed, and it was independent of feature mismatch, thereby reflecting a comparable pattern as visual spatial NP. We discuss spatial selection with respect to possible modality-specific processes.

This study investigated the effects of observing pain in others upon vicarious somatosensory experiences and the detection of somatosensory stimuli in both fibromyalgia (FM) patients and controls. The putative modulatory role of dispositional empathy, hypervigilance to pain, and central sensitization was examined. FM patients (n = 39) and controls (n = 38) saw videos depicting pain-related (hands being pricked) and non-pain-related scenes, while occasionally experiencing vibrotactile stimuli themselves on the left, right, or both hands. Participants reported the location at which they felt a somatosensory stimulus. Tactile and visual scenes were presented in the same spatial location (congruent; e.g., left-left) or from opposite locations (incongruent; e.g., left-right). We calculated the proportion of correct responses, vicarious somatosensory experiences (i.e., trials on which an illusory somatosensory experience was reported while observing pain-related scenes), and neglect errors (i.e., reporting only the site congruent to the visual pain-related information when both hands had been stimulated). Observing another in pain resulted in an equal numbers of vicarious somatosensory experiences in both groups and facilitated the detection of tactile stimuli, especially during spatially congruent trials. Counter to our expectations, this facilitation was not moderated by group. FM patients made fewer neglect errors. Hypervigilance for pain, dispositional empathy, and central sensitization did not exert a modulatory role. Observing pain facilitates the detection of tactile stimuli in FM patients and controls. Overall, a low incidence of vicarious experiences was observed. Further research is needed to understand the role of attentional body focus in the elicitation of vicarious experiences.

In musical performance, bodily gestures play an important role in communicating expressive intentions to audiences. Although previous studies have demonstrated that visual information can have an effect on the perceived expressivity of musical performances, the investigation of audiovisual interactions has been held back by the technical difficulties associated with the generation of controlled, mismatching stimuli.With the present study, we aimed to address this issue by utilizing a novel method in order to generate controlled, balanced stimuli that comprised both matching and mismatching bimodal combinations of different expressive intentions. The aim of Experiment 1 was to investigate the relative contributions of auditory and visual kinematic cues in the perceived expressivity of piano performances, and in Experiment 2 we explored possible crossmodal interactions in the perception of auditory and visual expressivity. The results revealed that although both auditory and visual kinematic cues contribute significantly to the perception of overall expressivity, the effect of visual kinematic cues appears to be somewhat stronger. These results also provide preliminary evidence of crossmodal interactions in the perception of auditory and visual expressivity. In certain performance conditions, visual cues had an effect on the ratings of auditory expressivity, and auditory cues had a small effect on the ratings of visual expressivity.

Using a tactile variant of the negative-priming paradigm, we analyzed the influence of Gestalt grouping on the ability of participants to ignore distracting tactile information. The distance between participants' hands, to which the target and distractor stimuli were simultaneously delivered, was varied (near/touching hands vs. hands far apart). In addition, the influence of touching hands was controlled, as participants wore gloves and their hands were blocked from vision by a cover. The magnitude of the tactile negative-priming effect was modulated by the interaction between hand separation and whether or not gloves were worn. When the hands were touching, negative priming emerged only while wearing gloves that prevented direct skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, when the separation between the participants' hands was larger, negative priming emerged only when gloves were not worn. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of the competing influences of two interacting Gestalt principles--namely, connectedness and proximity--on the processing of tactile distractors.

The "pip-and-pop effect" refers to the facilitation of search for a visual target (a horizontal or vertical bar whose color changes frequently) among multiple visual distractors (tilted bars also changing color unpredictably) by the presentation of a spatially uninformative auditory cue synchronized with the color change of the visual target. In the present study, the visual stimuli in the search display changed brightness instead of color, and the crossmodal congruency between the pitch of the auditory cue and the brightness of the visual target was manipulated. When cue presence and cue congruency were randomly varied between trials (Experiment 1), both congruent cues (low-frequency tones synchronized with dark target states or high-frequency tones synchronized with bright target states) and incongruent cues (the reversed mapping) facilitated visual search performance equally, relative to a no-cue baseline condition. However, when cue congruency was blocked and the participants were informed about the pitch-brightness mapping in the cue-present blocks (Experiment 2), performance was significantly enhanced when the cue and target were crossmodally congruent as compared to when they were incongruent. These results therefore suggest that the crossmodal congruency between auditory pitch and visual brightness can influence performance in the pip-and-pop task by means of top-down facilitation.

We constantly integrate the information that is available to our various senses. The extent to which the mechanisms of multisensory integration are subject to the influences of attention, emotion, and/or motivation is currently unknown. The "ventriloquist effect" is widely assumed to be an automatic crossmodal phenomenon, shifting the perceived location of an auditory stimulus toward a concurrently presented visual stimulus. In the present study, we examined whether audiovisual binding, as indicated by the magnitude of the ventriloquist effect, is influenced by threatening auditory stimuli presented prior to the ventriloquist experiment. Syllables spoken in a fearful voice were presented from one of eight loudspeakers, while syllables spoken in a neutral voice were presented from the other seven locations. Subsequently, participants had to localize pure tones while trying to ignore concurrent visual stimuli (both the auditory and the visual stimuli here were emotionally neutral). A reliable ventriloquist effect was observed. The emotional stimulus manipulation resulted in a reduction of the magnitude of the subsequently measured ventriloquist effect in both hemifields, as compared to a control group exposed to a similar attention-capturing, but nonemotional, manipulation. These results suggest that the emotional system is capable of influencing multisensory binding processes that have heretofore been considered automatic.

In many everyday situations, our senses are bombarded by many different unisensory signals at any given time. To gain the most veridical, and least variable, estimate of environmental stimuli/properties, we need to combine the individual noisy unisensory perceptual estimates that refer to the same object, while keeping those estimates belonging to different objects or events separate. How, though, does the brain "know" which stimuli to combine? Traditionally, researchers interested in the crossmodal binding problem have focused on the roles that spatial and temporal factors play in modulating multisensory integration. However, crossmodal correspondences between various unisensory features (such as between auditory pitch and visual size) may provide yet another important means of constraining the crossmodal binding problem. A large body of research now shows that people exhibit consistent crossmodal correspondences between many stimulus features in different sensory modalities. For example, people consistently match high-pitched sounds with small, bright objects that are located high up in space. The literature reviewed here supports the view that crossmodal correspondences need to be considered alongside semantic and spatiotemporal congruency, among the key constraints that help our brains solve the crossmodal binding problem.

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which tactile information that is unavailable for full conscious report can be accessed using partial-report procedures. In Experiment 1, participants reported the total number of tactile stimuli (up to six) presented simultaneously to their fingertips (numerosity judgment task). In another condition, after being presented with the tactile display, they had to detect whether or not the position indicated by a (visual or tactile) probe had previously contained a tactile stimulus (partial-report task). Participants correctly reported up to three stimuli in the numerosity judgment task, but their performance was far better in the partial-report task: Up to six stimuli were perceived at the shortest target-probe intervals. A similar pattern of results was observed when the participants performed a concurrent articulatory suppression task (Exp. 2). The results of a final experiment revealed that performance in the partial-report task was overall better for stimuli presented on the fingertips than for stimuli presented across the rest of the body surface. These results demonstrate that tactile information that is unavailable for report in a numerosity task can nevertheless sometimes still be accessed when a partial-report procedure is used instead.

Several recent studies have shown that attentional capture is not an automatic process. For example, abrupt peripheral onsets do not affect the processing of targets presented subsequently at that location when participants have to concurrently perform a perceptually demanding task elsewhere. This result leaves open the question of whether peripheral onsets lose their effectiveness in capturing attention or whether, instead, the performance of a perceptually demanding task entails a faster disengagement of attention from the cued location. Here, we measured exogenous spatial attentional-orienting effects either while participants performed a concurrent perceptually demanding central-monitoring task (a rapid serial visual presentation of letters for a to-be-detected digit target; Experiments 1 and 2) or in isolation (the baseline condition in Experiment 2). The results showed that peripheral onsets captured participants' attention at both the 80- and 190-ms stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in the baseline condition. Crucially, however, during concurrent central monitoring, peripheral onsets were effective in capturing attention only at an 80-ms SOA, while the orienting effect disappeared as soon as a changing letter drew participants' attention back to the central stream (at an SOA of 190 ms). These findings demonstrate that task-irrelevant abrupt onsets cannot be entirely overridden by top-down attentional control, although attentional capture effects are dramatically reduced by an ongoing perceptually demanding task.

In the present study, participants identified the location of a visual target presented in a rapidly masked, changing sequence of visual distractors. In Experiment 1, we examined performance when a high tone, embedded in a sequence of low tones, was presented in synchrony with the visual target and observed that the high tone improved visual target identification, relative to a condition in which a low tone was synchronized with the visual target, thus replicating Vroomen and de Gelder's (2000, Experiment 1) findings. In subsequent experiments, we presented a single visual, auditory, vibrotactile, or combined audiotactile cue with the visual target and found similar improvements in participants' performance regardless of cue type. These results suggest that crossmodal perceptual organization may account for only a part of the improvement in participants' visual target identification performance reported in Vroomen and de Gelder's original study. Moreover, in contrast with many previous crossmodal cuing studies, our results also suggest that visual cues can enhance visual target identification performance. Alternative accounts for these results are discussed in terms of enhanced saliency, the presence of a temporal marker, and attentional capture by oddball stimuli as potential explanations for the observed performance benefits.

In parallel to studies of various cases of synesthesia, many cross-modal correspondences have also been documented in nonsynesthetes. Among these correspondences, implicit associations between taste and pitch have been reported recently (Crisinel & Spence, 2009, 2010). Here, we replicate and extend these findings through explicit matching of sounds of varying pitch to a range of tastes/flavors. In addition, participants in the experiment reported here also chose the type of musical instrument most appropriate for each taste/flavor. The association of sweet and sour tastes to high-pitched notes was confirmed. By contrast, umami and bitter tastes were preferentially matched to low-pitched notes. Flavors did not display such strong pitch associations. The choice of musical instrument seems to have been driven primarily by a matching of the hedonic value and familiarity of the two types of stimuli. Our results raise important questions about our representation of tastes and flavors and could also lead to applications in the marketing of food products.

In the present study, we explored the conditions under which color-generated expectations influence participants' identification of flavored drinks. Four experiments were conducted in which the degree of discrepancy between the expected identity of a flavor (derived from the color of a drink) and the actual identity of the flavor (derived from orthonasal olfactory cues) was examined. Using a novel experimental approach that controlled for individual differences in color-flavor associations, we first measured the flavor expectations held by each individual and only then examined whether the same individual's identification responses were influenced by his or her own expectations. Under conditions of low discrepancy, the perceived disparity between the expected and the actual flavor identities was small. When a particular color--identified by participants as one that generated a strong flavor expectation--was added to these drinks (as compared with when no such color was added), a significantly greater proportion of identification responses were consistent with this expectation. This held true even when participants were explicitly told that color would be an uninformative cue and were given as much time as desired to complete the task. By contrast, under conditions of high discrepancy, adding the same colors to the drinks no longer had the same effect on participants' identification responses. Critically, there was a significant difference in the proportion of responses that were consistent with participants' color-based expectations in conditions of low as compared with high discrepancy, indicating that the degree of discrepancy between an individual's actual and expected experience can significantly affect the extent to which color influences judgments of flavor identity.

Presenting an auditory or tactile cue in temporal synchrony with a change in the color of a visual target can facilitate participants' visual search performance. In the present study, we compared the magnitude of unimodal auditory, vibrotactile, and bimodal (i.e., multisensory) cuing benefits when the nonvisual cues were presented in temporal synchrony with the changing of the target's color (Experiments 1 and 2). The target (a horizontal or vertical line segment) was presented among a number of distractors (tilted line segments) that also changed color at various times. In Experiments 3 and 4, the cues were also made spatially informative with regard to the location of the visual target. The unimodal and bimodal cues gave rise to an equivalent (significant) facilitation of participants' visual search performance relative to a no-cue baseline condition. Making the unimodal auditory and vibrotactile cues spatially informative produced further performance improvements (on validly cued trials), as compared with cues that were spatially uninformative or otherwise spatially invalid. A final experiment was conducted in order to determine whether cue location (close to versus far from the visual display) would influence participants' visual search performance. Auditory cues presented close to the visual search display were found to produce significantly better performance than cues presented over headphones. Taken together, these results have implications for the design of nonvisual and multisensory warning signals used in complex visual displays.

Several studies have shown that the direction in which a visual apparent motion stream moves can influence the perceived direction of an auditory apparent motion stream (an effect known as cross-modal dynamic capture). However, little is known about the role that intramodal perceptual grouping processes play in the multisensory integration of motion information. The present study was designed to investigate the time course of any modulation of the cross-modal dynamic capture effect by the nature of the perceptual grouping taking place within vision. Participants were required to judge the direction of an auditory apparent motion stream while trying to ignore visual apparent motion streams presented in a variety of different configurations. Our results demonstrate that the cross-modal dynamic capture effect was influenced more by visual perceptual grouping when the conditions for intramodal perceptual grouping were set up prior to the presentation of the audiovisual apparent motion stimuli. However, no such modulation occurred when the visual perceptual grouping manipulation was established at the same time as or after the presentation of the audiovisual stimuli. These results highlight the importance of the unimodal perceptual organization of sensory information to the manifestation of multisensory integration.

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 cross-modal 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.

If we stand at a mirror's edge, we can see one half of our body reflected in the mirror, as if it were the other half of our body, seen "through" the mirror. We used this mirror illusion to examine the effect of conflicts between visually and proprioceptively specified arm positions on subsequent reaching movements made with the unseen right arm. When participants viewed their static left arm in the mirror (i.e., as if it were their right arm), subsequent right-arm reaching movements were affected significantly more when there was conflict between the apparent visual and the proprioceptively specified right-arm positions than when there was no conflict. This result demonstrates that visual capture of arm position can occur when individual body parts are viewed in the mirror and that this capture has a measurable effect on subsequent reaching movements made with an unseen arm. The result has implications for how the brain represents the body across different sensory modalities.

Behavioral studies of multisensory integration in motion perception have focused on the particular case of visual and auditory signals. Here, we addressed a new case: audition and touch. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of an apparent motion stream presented in an irrelevant modality (audition or touch) on the perception of apparent motion streams in the other modality (touch or audition, respectively). We found significant congruency effects (lower performance when the direction of motion in the irrelevant modality was incongruent with the direction of the target) for the two possible modality combinations. This congruency effect was asymmetrical, with tactile motion distractors having a stronger influence on auditory motion perception than vice versa In Experiment 2, we used auditory motion targets and tactile motion distractors while participants adopted one of two possible postures: arms uncrossed or arms crossed. The effects of tactile motion on auditory motion judgments were replicated in the arms-uncrossed posture, but they dissipated in the arms-crossed posture. The implications of these results are discussed in light of current findings regarding the representation of tactile and auditory space.