Citation

Mayer AR, Kosson DS. Neuropsychology 2004; 18(2): 248-257.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Finch University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, IL, USA. amayerwi@hotmail.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/0894-4105.18.2.248

PMID

15099147

Abstract

In this experiment, a Stroop-like paradigm was used to investigate the ability to attend to visuospatial cues while ignoring distracting stimuli in the auditory or visual modality. In Part 1, the authors investigated whether linguistic cue words (i.e., RIGHT, LEFT, DOWN, and UP) would induce endogenous shifts of attention to visual targets. In Part 2, a relevant distractor stimulus was introduced in a different modality from the endogenous cues to investigate effects of interference. Twenty-five right-handed students served as participants. Auditory and visual linguistic cues were effective in inducing shifts of visual attention when cues were presented alone. Furthermore, introducing a distractor stimulus decreased the efficacy of these cues differently depending on modality, suggesting that language processing and visuospatial attention may share neuronal resources. Implications for unimodal and supramodal mechanisms of selective attention and relevant neuronal networks are discussed.

Language: en