Object categories regulate the sensory dominance in cross-modalconflict

Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2024-06-06

Zhou Heng Wang Aijun Yuan Xiaongyong Jiang Yi

Abstract： The sensory dominance is a phenomenon in which the brain selectively processes specificsensory information when presented with multisensory inputs, thereby enhancing humanperception of external stimuli. Previous studies have discussed the sensory dominance atperceptual and response levels. However, how the intermediate processing level betweenperceptual and response levels affects the sensory dominance remains unknown. Therefore, thepresent study adopted the cross-modal 2-1 mapping paradigm and manipulated object categoriesthrough three studies to investigate the role of the intermediate processing level on sensorydominance in cross-modal conflict. In this paradigm, based on key mapping, cognitive processing levels can be defined intopreresponse level (included perceptual and semantic levels) and response level. The differencebetween the audiovisual incongruent condition and the audiovisual congruent condition was calledthe conflict effect, and the sensory dominance can be obtained by comparing the conflict effect ofattention to vision and auditory. Experiment 1 manipulated the degree of difference in objectcategories to explore its impact on sensory dominance. Experiments 1a~c involved animal objects(small differences), tool objects (moderate differences), and animal and musical instrument objects(large differences), 30 participants were recruited for each experiment. Because visual picturesreach perceptual representation earlier, while auditory sounds reach semantic representation earlier. Therefore, Experiment 2 (34 participants) changed visual pictures into visual words on the basis ofExperiment 1c to explore effects of visual presentation way of object categories on sensorydominance. In Experiment 3 (20 participants), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) wasused on the left anterior temporal lobe, an important brain region responsible for processing objectcategories to further causally study effects of object category on the sensory dominance of theresponse level. The results of Experiment 1 showed that, no matter what the difference of object categories, at the preresponse level, the conflict effect of attention to auditory was significantly greater thanthat of attention to vision, that is, visual dominance. However, at the response level, visualdominance appeared when the object category difference was small (Experiment 1a), no sensorydominance was observed when the object category difference was moderate (Experiment 1b), auditory dominance appeared when the object category difference was large (Experiment 1c). Itwas found that the results of Experiment 2 and Experiment 1c were consistent, that is, auditorydominance, indicating that this behavior pattern was not affected by the bottom-up visualpresentation way. The results of Experiment 3 showed that under cathodal tDCS condition, thepreresponse level still showed visual dominance, but the response level no longer showed sensorydominance. This result showed that effects of object categories on the sensory dominance of theresponse level from the causal level. The mechanism of sensory dominance is still under investigation. The present study was firstto find that object categories affected the sensory dominance of the response level. Fromtheperspective of cognitive processing level, intermediate processing level played a regulating role inthe sensory dominance of the response level, enriching the explanatory theory of sensorydominance and providing a new perspective for the study of sensory dominance in cross-modalconflict.

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