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Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
Published on: January 23, 2017
Switching attention between modalities: further evidence for visual dominance
Sarah Lukas1, Andrea M Philipp, Iring Koch
1Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Jägerstrasse 17-19, 52066 Aachen, Germany. lukas@psych.rwth-aachen.de
Abstract:
The present study examined cross-modal selective attention using a task-switching paradigm. In a series of experiments, we presented lateralized visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously and asked participants to make a spatial decision according to either the visual or the auditory stimulus. We observed consistent cross-modal interference in the form of a spatial congruence effect. This effect was asymmetrical, with higher costs when responding to auditory than to visual stimuli. Furthermore, we found stimulus-modality-shift costs, indicating a persisting attentional bias towards the attended stimulus modality. We discuss our findings with respect to visual dominance, directed-attention accounts, and the modality-appropriateness hypothesis.
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