Authors: Agnès Alsius Jordi Navarra Salvador SotoFaraco
Publish Date: 2007/09/25
Volume: 183, Issue: 3, Pages: 399-404
Abstract
One of the classic examples of multisensory integration in humans occurs when speech sounds are combined with the sight of corresponding articulatory gestures Despite the longstanding assumption that this kind of audiovisual binding operates in an attentionfree mode recent findings Alsius et al in Curr Biol 159839–843 2005 suggest that audiovisual speech integration decreases when visual or auditory attentional resources are depleted The present study addressed the generalization of this attention constraint by testing whether a similar decrease in multisensory integration is observed when attention demands are imposed on a sensory domain that is not involved in speech perception such as touch We measured the McGurk illusion in a dual task paradigm involving a difficult tactile task The results showed that the percentage of visually influenced responses to audiovisual stimuli was reduced when attention was diverted to a tactile task This finding is attributed to a modulatory effect on audiovisual integration of speech mediated by supramodal attention limitations We suggest that the interactions between the attentional system and crossmodal binding mechanisms may be much more extensive and dynamic than it was advanced in previous studies
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