Hand-hemispace spatial compatibility, precueing, and stimulus-onset asynchrony

Neuroscience Letters, 2006

We report an experiment designed to investigate the temporal dynamics of the visuotactile crossmodal congruency effect. Vibrotactile targets were presented randomly to the index finger (top side of a hand-held cube) or thumb (bottom side) of either hand while visual distractors were presented randomly from one of the same four possible locations. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the vibrotactile target and the visual distractor was varied on a trial-by-trial basis. Participants made speeded discrimination responses regarding the elevation of the vibrotactile targets (i.e., upper versus lower) while trying to ignore the visual distractors. The largest crossmodal congruency effects (defined as the difference in performance between incongruent and congruent elevation distractor trials) were obtained when the visual distractor preceded the vibrotactile target by 50-100 ms, although significant effects were also reported when the distractor followed the target by as much as 100 ms. These results are discussed in terms of the conjoint influence of response competition, crossmodal perceptual interactions (i.e., the ventriloquism effect), and exogenous spatial attention on the crossmodal congruency effect. The distinct temporal signatures of each of these effects are also highlighted.

Psychophysiology, 2002

We investigated the inhibitory regulation of perceptual-motor processing streams in a task that switched between spatially compatible and incompatible stimulus-response mappings. Thirty male and female college-aged participants performed a reaction time~RT! task in which the response was either spatially compatible or not depending on a cue immediately preceding the stimulus. The cue-to-stimulus interval~CI! was either 50 or 500 ms. Incompatible mapping yielded the typical slower responses than compatible mapping at 500 ms, but not at 50 ms. Changes in cardiac interbeat interval~IBI! and performance suggested that automatic responses to compatible stimuli were suppressed at 50 ms. Both performance and IBI changes as well as individual differences in these measures suggested a precue preparatory schema or set biased toward suppressing the compatible mapping. An alternate hypothesis of a cue-induced suppression was questioned. The results illustrate the operation of different supervisory processes in the anticipatory and online control of action.

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2012

Tlauka and McKenna ( 2000 ) reported a reversal of the traditional stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect (faster responding to a stimulus presented on the same side than to one on the opposite side) when the stimulus appearing on one side of a display is a member of a superordinate unit that is largely on the opposite side. We investigated the effects of a visual cue that explicitly shows a superordinate unit, and of assignment of multiple stimuli within each superordinate unit to one response, on the SRC effect based on superordinate unit position. Three experiments revealed that stimulus-response assignment is critical, while the visual cue plays a minor role, in eliciting the SRC effect based on the superordinate unit position. Findings suggest bidirectional interaction between perception and action and simultaneous spatial stimulus coding according to multiple frames of reference, with contribution of each coding to the SRC effect flexibly varying with task situations.

Human Movement Science, 1994

were conducted which examined the influence of attention allocation and response factors upon the precue effect (i.e., RT difference between valid and invalid precue trials) for both peripheral and foveally delivered stimuli. Reaction stimuli (light emitting diode) differed only with respect to presentation location which was precued by the precue signal with 75% accuracy. Both a I-Response and a 2-Response task were used. In the former case, only attention allocation was free to contribute to the precue effect while both attention allocation and response factors were potentially operational in the 2-Response condition.

Neuropsychologia, 1988

Two major hypotheses have been advanced to account for stimulusPresponse compatibility effects in the situation in which the location of the target is irrelevant for choosing the correct response. According to the attentional hypothesis, compatibility effects reflect a response bias, favoring the effector on the same side as the stimulus. According to the coding hypothesis, compatibility effects result from a correspondence between the spatial codes of the stimulus and effector. In the present study, two components of attention-selective attention and intention-were independently manipulated by providing selective preparatory information before onset of a target stimulus. Attentional information indicated where the target stimulus would occur; intentional information indicated which hand would have to be used to respond. Compatibility effects were observed only in the condition in which intentional information, but no attentional information, was provided. These findings support the attentional hypothesis and indicate that a specific aspect of attention, namely a selective readiness to respond to the stimulus, is a necessary condition for compatibility effects to occur.

2015

Sistema de avaliação: às cegas por pares (double blind review).

Experimental Brain Research, 2011

Recent results on the nature and limits of multisensory enhancement are inconsistent when stimuli are presented across spatial regions. We presented visual, tactile and visuotactile stimuli to participants in two speeded response tasks. Each unisensory stimulus was presented to either the left or right hemispace, and multisensory stimuli were presented as either aligned (e.g. visual right/tactile right) or misaligned (e.g. visual right/tactile left). The Wrst task was a simple reaction time (SRT) paradigm where participants responded to all stimulations irrespective of spatial position. Results showed that multisensory gain and coactivation were the same for spatially aligned and misaligned visuotactile stimulation. In the second task, a choice reaction time (CRT) paradigm where participants responded to right-sided stimuli only, misaligned stimuli yielded slower reaction times. No diVerence in multisensory gain was found between the SRT and CRT tasks for aligned stimulation. Overall, the results suggest that when spatial information is task-irrelevant, multisensory integration of spatially aligned and misaligned stimuli is equivalent. However, manipulating task requirements can alter this eVect.

Arquivos Brasileiros De Oftalmologia, 2003

Manual and saccadic reaction times (MRTs and SRTs) are reduced when a warning signal precedes the onset of a target. The decreasing on SRTs observed after the offset of a fixation point has been called the gap effect. Different theories have been proposed to explain it. According to some authors, the offset also allows the saccadic system to generate a separate population of SRTs, the express saccades. Nevertheless there is no agreement about the influence of the offset of a peripheral stimulus on MRT. In two experiments we tested the effects of a peripheral visual offset used as preparatory signal on MRTs to a target after variable intervals. We found a reduction on MRT at short (200-300 ms) and long (1300-2000 ms) intervals after the peripheral offset. MRT distribution shifted toward short latencies, which sometimes formed a separate population. Since MRTs obtained at long intervals were affected by the introduction of catch trials, while MRTs at short intervals were not, we propose that two different mechanisms are involved in the decreasing of MRTs: warning and temporal expectancy. Our data support the hypothesis that the temporal component involved with the preparatory stages for motor responses can be shared by saccadic movements and key press responses, allowing the reduction on motor latencies after the visual offset in the gap paradigm. Our data corroborate the three components model for the gap effect. In our view, the question of the existence or not of a gap effect for manual responses is essentially conceptual.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1999

Lateral presentation of relevant information facilitates manual responses if the side of relevant information corresponds to the side of the response. Recently, temporally overlapping EEG asymmetries over the central motor cortex and posterior sites were reported as a possible correlate of the sensory-motor integration of spatial information. The present study investigated whether sensory-motor integration of spatial information can occur with symbolic spatial information the same way as with laterally presented stimuli. The task required participants to respond to arrows (target stimuli), which were “flanked” (from above and below) by neutral stimuli or by other arrows (compatible or not). In Experiment 1, this task was compared to the same task with letters as stimuli and to an incompatible task where participants had to respond “against” the arrow direction. The effect of the flankers on response times was largest if subjects had to respond to the arrows in the common way. This w...

Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2004

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 crossmodal 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.