Visual field asymmetry in the facilitation effects of audio-visual integration on visual representation(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 31st Annual Meeting)

Abstract

Auditory stimuli often improve visual detection and identification performance, although they do not directly convey information related to visual stimuli. This facilitation effect is assumed to be related to attentional mechanisms, which have hemispheric asymmetry. In this study, we examined the relationship between the facilitation effect of audio-visual integration and hemispheric asymmetry in attentional mechanisms using a dual-stream RSVP task. Auditory stimuli affected the left hemisphere when two targets have to be identified, but affected the right hemisphere when two targets have to be localized. Because the auditory facilitation effect corresponds to hemispheric specialization in perceptual processing, we propose that salient stimulus-driven attention has greater effects on the dominant hemisphere to promote stable and efficient processing.