Attentional gradient for crossmodal proximal-distal tactile cueing of visual spatial attention

Past studies have established a crossmodal spatial attentional link among vision, audition, and touch. The present study examined the dependence of visual attention on the distance between a distal visual target (a changing element among static distractors) and the quadrant of the visual display cued by a proximal tactile stimulus. The distance between the center of the cued visual quadrant and the visual target was one of six values: 0, 90, 180, 350, 450, and 550 pixels. The distances of 0, 90, and 180 corresponded to the valid tactile cueing condition, where the tactile cue and the visual target occurred in the same quadrant. The distances of 350, 450, and 550 corresponded to the invalid tactile cueing condition, where the tactilely-cued quadrant did not match that of the visual change. Results from 10 young adults showed that mean response time increased with respect to the cue-target distance, thereby confirming a gradient of visual attention for proximal-distal tactile cueing. In addition, the response times for valid tactile cues were shorter than those for invalid tactile cues, confirming earlier findings that valid tactile cues facilitate visual search and invalid tactile cues interfere with visual search. The findings of the present study have implications for the design of multimodal attention-cueing systems for practical applications such as collision warning systems in automobiles.