Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 19, 2026
06:46
Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
The effects of multisensory targets on saccadic trajectory deviations: eliminating age differences
Karen Lucia Campbell1, Naseem Al-Aidroos, Robert Fatt
1Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada. k.campbell@utoronto.ca
Experimental Brain Research
|October 24, 2009
Summary
Bimodal audio-visual targets enhance the inhibition of visual distractors, leading to larger eye movement deviations. This multisensory integration benefit was consistent across age groups, suggesting it can mitigate age-related differences in attention.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human Factors Engineering
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Multisensory integration, the combination of information from different senses, is known to enhance perceptual performance.
- Older adults often show greater benefits from multisensory integration compared to younger adults, suggesting potential compensatory mechanisms for age-related sensory decline.
- Inhibitory control, the ability to suppress irrelevant information, is crucial for effective attention and can be modulated by sensory input.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether bimodal (audio-visual) targets improve the inhibition of visual distractors compared to unimodal targets.
- To determine if this improved distractor inhibition leads to greater saccadic trajectory deviations away from distractors.
- To examine if bimodal targets reduce age-related differences in generating such deviations, given older adults' enhanced multisensory integration.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed a visual search task with salient distractors presented before or after targets.
- Target stimuli were either unimodal (visual only) or bimodal (audio-visual).
- Saccadic eye movements were recorded to analyze trajectory deviations away from distractors.
Main Results:
- Bimodal targets resulted in significantly larger saccadic trajectory deviations away from distractors compared to unimodal targets.
- This effect was observed specifically when the distractor preceded the target.
- The benefit of bimodal targets on deviation production was comparable between younger and older adult groups, contrary to expectations.
- Older adults demonstrated similar abilities to younger adults in generating deviations away from distractors.
Conclusions:
- Bimodal audio-visual targets enhance the inhibition of preceding visual distractors, leading to greater saccadic trajectory deviations.
- Multisensory integration appears to be a robust mechanism for improving distractor inhibition, with benefits not limited by age.
- Age differences in producing trajectory deviations away from distractors may not be inevitable, and multisensory integration offers a promising avenue for enhancing top-down control over attention in aging populations.
