Neural Basis of Semantically Dependent and Independent Cross-Modal Boosts on the Attentional Blink

The present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in a visual object-recognition task under the attentional blink paradigm to explore the temporal dynamics of the cross-modal boost on attentional blink and whether this auditory benefit would be modulated by semantic congruency between T2 and the simultaneous sound. Behaviorally, the present study showed that not only a semantically congruent but also a semantically incongruent sound improved T2 discrimination during the attentional blink interval, whereas the enhancement was larger for the congruent sound. The ERP results revealed that the behavioral improvements induced by both the semantically congruent and incongruent sounds were closely associated with an early cross-modal interaction on the occipital N195 (192-228 ms). In contrast, the lower T2 accuracy for the incongruent than congruent condition was accompanied by a larger late occurring cento-parietal N440 (424-448 ms). These findings suggest that the cross-modal boost on attentional blink is hierarchical: the task-irrelevant but simultaneous sound, irrespective of its semantic relevance, firstly enables T2 to escape the attentional blink via cross-modally strengthening the early stage of visual object-recognition processing, whereas the semantic conflict of the sound begins to interfere with visual awareness only at a later stage when the representation of visual object is extracted.