Our brain constantly processes multisensory inputs to make decisions and guide behaviors, but how goal-relevant processes are influenced by irrelevant information is unclear. Here, we investigated the effects of intermodal and intramodal task-irrelevant information on visual and auditory categorical decision-making. In both visual and auditory tasks, we manipulated the modality of irrelevant inputs (visual vs. auditory vs. none) and used linear discrimination analysis of EEG and hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM) to identify when and how task-irrelevant information affected decision-relevant processing. The results revealed modality-specific impacts of irrelevant inputs on visual and auditory categorical decision-making. The distinct effects on the visual task were shown on the neural components, with auditory distractors amplifying the sensory processing whereas visual distractors amplifying the post-sensory process. Conversely, the distinct effects on the auditory task were shown in behavioral performance and underlying cognitive processes. Visual distractors facilitate behavioral performance and affect both stages, but auditory distractors interfere with behavioral performance and impact on the sensory processing rather than the post-sensory decision stage. Overall, these findings suggested that auditory distractors affect the sensory processing stage of both tasks while visual distractors affect the post-sensory decision stage of visual categorical decision-making and both stages of auditory categorical decision-making. This study provides insights into how humans process information from multiple sensory modalities during decision-making by leveraging modality-specific impacts.
Research has shown that empathy and emotional intelligence are two predictive factors associated with positive adaptation and resilience in emerging adulthood. However, it has not been well investigated how these two factors interact to link resilience. Based on previous research showing that empathy requires the development of emotional perceptiveness, that resilience is closely related to adaptive processes, and that emotional intelligence mediates the relation between emotional perceptiveness and adaptive processes, the present study hypothesized that emotional intelligence has a potential mediating role in the association between empathy and resilience. Data were collected from 788 college students (429 females and 359 males) at a university in China. Resilience was measured by the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Empathy was measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Emotional Intelligence was measured by the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS). The results showed that empathy significantly predicted resilience, and emotional intelligence fully mediated the association between empathy and resilience. These findings suggest that the cognitive ability to perceive, evaluate, and regulate emotions plays an important role in the resilience in emerging adults. Implications of cognitive approaches to resilience research in emerging adulthood are discussed.
Selective attention refers to the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. In a multisensory context, how do people selectively attend to multiple inputs when making categorical decisions? Here, we examined the role of selective attention in cross-modal categorization in two experiments. In a speed categorization task, participants were asked to attend to visual or auditory targets and categorize them while ignoring other irrelevant stimuli. A response-time extended multinomial processing tree (RT-MPT) model was implemented to estimate the contribution of attentional focusing on task-relevant information and attentional filtering of distractors. The results indicated that the role of selective attention was modality-specific, with differences found in attentional focusing and filtering between visual and auditory modalities. Visual information could be focused on or filtered out more effectively, whereas auditory information was more difficult to filter out, causing greater interference with task-relevant performance. The findings suggest that selective attention plays a critical and differential role across modalities, which provides a novel and promising approach to understanding multisensory processing and attentional focusing and filtering mechanisms of categorical decision-making.
Although ever-growing literature has documented that a multisensory environment influences individuals' learning, there is less agreement as to whether it facilitates or hinders and why. In this work, we addressed this issue with a systematic review and meta-analysis and examined the multisensory facilitation and interference of learning. The present study reviewed the literature on audiovisual learning and quantitatively synthesized a total of 29 studies with 198 comparisons to (1) assess the effect of multisensory context by examining the role of congruency, (2) examine study-level factors-modality, age, and familiarity-that may moderate the effects observed across studies, and (3) discuss possible explanations and implications for theories of attention in learning. The results indicated that the multisensory effect was constrained by the congruency between multimodal information. Compared to a unisensory presentation, a multisensory context enhanced the task performance in the congruent conditions whereas it hindered the performance in the incongruent conditions. Furthermore, the effect of congruency was modulated by the modality of the target stimulus and the age of participants, and the multisensory effect was limited for familiar multimodal associations under incongruent conditions. Importantly, interference was found from the auditory distractors to the visual targets but not from the visual distractors to the auditory targets, in child participants but not in adults, and for the familiar multisensory associations but not for the unfamiliar ones. These results point to a critical role of selective attention in multisensory learning and imply roles of attentional focusing and filtering in processing congruent and incongruent multimodal information.
Attention , Learning , Adult , Child , Humans , Task Performance and Analysis
Numerous studies have shown that perception of emotion and emotional memory vary across the menstrual cycle. However, most of these studies used stimuli that contained not only emotional but also social elements. Importantly, the social cognitive abilities of individuals are as crucial as emotional abilities for danger avoidance and recruitment of allies. Therefore, the issue that natural hormonal fluctuations may affect emotion processing should be revisited. To investigate whether the effects of the menstrual cycle are emotion-specific or can also be attributed to social information processing, the present study examined social attention across the menstrual cycle in three tasks-visual search, memory, and memory-guided orienting-with a combination of behavioral and eye-tracking measures. We used images of people standing upright with neutral emotion as social distractors and everyday objects with physical properties matched as non-social distractors. Thirty-six healthy women without hormone use and with stable menstrual cycles of 26 - 30 days participated in the three tasks in the late follicular phase (FP) and mid-luteal phase (LP), respectively. During visual search, participants were asked to search for targets accompanied by social or non-social distractors in complex scenes. Social attentional bias, as evidenced by longer search times and shorter gaze behaviors for targets with social distractors, was found in the FP but not in the LP. In the following memory task, memory accuracy for targets was higher in the FP than in the LP, and the memory for targets with social distractors was more precise in both phases. Finally, in the orienting task, targets in social scenes were detected more slowly than in non-social scenes in LP. Taken together, these findings point to the interplay between social attention, memory, and memory-oriented attention and reveal the distinct processing pathways for social information in the FP and LP. The underlying mechanisms from an evolutionary perspective and from behavioral and neural basis were discussed.
Attention , Attentional Bias , Cognition , Emotions , Female , Humans , Menstrual Cycle/psychology
Selective attention is the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. This work examined the development of selective attention to natural scenes and objects with a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Children (N = 69, ages 4-6 years) and adults (N = 80) were asked to attend to either objects or scenes, while ignoring the other type of stimulus. A multinomial processing tree model was used to decompose selective attention into focusing and filtering components. The results suggest that attention is object-biased in children, due to difficulty filtering attention to goal-irrelevant objects, whereas attention in adults is relatively unbiased. The findings suggest important developmental asymmetries in selective attention to scenes and objects.
Attention , Visual Perception , Adult , Bias , Child , Child, Preschool , Humans
