Attention and the multiple stages of multisensory integration: A review of audiovisual studies

Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention have a large impact on how we perceive the world. Therefore, it is important to know under what circumstances these processes take place and how they affect our performance. So far, no consensus has been reached on whether multisensory integration and crossmodal attention operate independently and whether they represent truly automatic processes. This review describes the constraints under which multisensory integration and crossmodal attention occur and in what brain areas these processes take place. Some studies suggest that multisensory integration and crossmodal attention take place in higher heteromodal brain areas, while others show the involvement of early sensory specific areas. Additionally, the current literature suggests that multisensory integration and attention interact depending on what processing level integration takes place. To shed light on this issue, different frameworks regarding the level at which multisensory interactions takes place are discussed. Finally, this review focuses on the question whether audiovisual interactions and crossmodal attention in particular are automatic processes. Recent studies suggest that this is not always the case. Overall, this review provides evidence for a parallel processing framework suggesting that both multisensory integration and attentional processes take place and can interact at multiple stages in the brain.     

Empathy as dialectic imagination

Abstract

The importance of relationship processes for humanistic and psychodynamic therapists makes empathy a critical concept in psychotherapy. Experimental work suggests that learning occurs only when the subject is actively and cooperatively engaged in the learning process. Similarly, psychotherapy is only effective when the client is willingly active in the therapeutic process. A crucial aspect of the therapist's activity is empathic imagination, defined here as the use of “dialectic” thinking capacities‐the recognition of conceptual alternatives in a given situation. These processes are at the heart of a humanistic view of agency. The therapist's use of this capacity allows imaginative projection into aspects of the client's experience, helping the client to feel understood in the relationship and emboldened to consider new possibilities in life.     

The absence of an auditory-visual attentional blink is not due to echoic memory

The second of two targets is often missed when presented shortly after the first target--a phenomenon referred to as the attentional blink (AB). Whereas the AB is a robust phenomenon within sensory modalities, the evidence for cross-modal ABs is rather mixed. Here, we test the possibility that the absence of an auditory-visual AB for visual letter recognition when streams of tones are used is due to the efficient use of echoic memory, allowing for the postponement of auditory processing. However, forcing participants to immediately process the auditory target, either by presenting interfering sounds during retrieval or by making the first target directly relevant for a speeded response to the second target, did not result in a return of a cross-modal AB. Thefindings argue against echoic memory as an explanation for efficient cross-modal processing. Instead, we hypothesized that a cross-modal AB may be observed when the different modalities use common representations, such as semantic representations. In support of this, a deficit for visual letter recognition returned when the auditory task required a distinction between spoken digits and letters.     

Contextualizing the History of Yoga in Geoffrey Samuel’s The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: A Review Symposium

International Journal of Hindu Studies -     

Priming T2 in a visual and auditory attentional blink task

Participants performed an attentional blink (AB) task including digits as targets and letters as distractors within the visual and auditory domains. Prior to the rapid serial visual presentation, a visual or auditory prime was presented in the form of a digit that was identical to the second target (T2) on 50% of the trials. In addition to the "classic" AB effect, an overall drop in performance on T2 was observed for the trials on which the stream was preceded by an identical prime from the same modality. No cross-modal priming was evident, suggesting that the observed inhibitory priming effects are modality specific. We argue that the present findings represent a special type of negative priming operating at a low feature level.     

The incremental variance problem: enhancing the predictability of academic success in an urban, commuter institution

The authors identified variables that enhance the predictability of academic performance and retention in an urban, commuter college. They used a longitudinal design with 2 waves of data collection: prior to 1st-semester attendance and again 6 semesters later. The results support the following conclusions: (a) After controlling for precollege indices of academic ability, specific variables within demographic, personal behavior, expectations, and attitudinal domains improved the predictability of grade point average by 15.5% for Whites and 20.3% for Blacks; overall, these analyses accounted for 61% of the variance in grade point average for Whites and 47% for Blacks; (b) for retention, the comparable increment in predictability was 2.5% for Whites and less than 1% for Blacks; overall, the percentage of retention variance accounted for was 42% for Whites and 29% for Blacks; and (c) a paradoxical finding was the combination of a positive correlation between high school average and students' expected grades on tests and a negative correlation between expected and actual grades. The paradox is resolved by citing data that demonstrate (a) a disparity between high school grades and independently measured academic accomplishment; (b) the consequent false attributions students draw about their academic abilities; and (c) the impact of these false attributions on the priority students place on their academic responsibilities.     

Dynamics of the relationship in clinical work with African-American clients

The high drop-out rate from psychotherapy for minority clients signals the need for increasing our skills with this population and exploring the possibility of treatment innovations. However, at the same time, there are developments in traditional psychodynamic theory that are relevant to work with African-American and other minority clients. The emerging emphasis in modern psychoanalytic theory on the therapist-patient relationship as a medium of change provides the background for this paper. Black clients typically operate in an interpersonal mode in the early phases of therapy. Unless they satisfy themselves as to the therapist's capacity to be sensitive to their sociocultural as well as to their personal situation, these clients often will not move into an instrumental mode, that is, one of working on the personal problems that brought them. In this paper, the dimensions of empathy and countertransference are discussed with respect to their particular relevance for Blacks in treatment and in the context of a telic-humanistic approach to psychology.A version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Ethnic Minority Perspectives in Human Development and Clinical Psychology held at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, May 15–16, 1986.     

Pip and pop: nonspatial auditory signals improve spatial visual search

Searching for an object within a cluttered, continuously changing environment can be a very time-consuming process. The authors show that a simple auditory pip drastically decreases search times for a synchronized visual object that is normally very difficult to find. This effect occurs even though the pip contains no information on the location or identity of the visual object. The experiments also show that the effect is not due to general alerting (because it does not occur with visual cues), nor is it due to top-down cuing of the visual change (because it still occurs when the pip is synchronized with distractors on the majority of trials). Instead, we propose that the temporal information of the auditory signal is integrated with the visual signal, generating a relatively salient emergent feature that automatically draws attention. Phenomenally, the synchronous pip makes the visual object pop out from its complex environment, providing a direct demonstration of spatially nonspecific sounds affecting competition in spatial visual processing.