The Effect Of Trial History On Multisensory Integration Based On Modality And Spatial Location

Stimuli occurring in multiple sensory modalities can be integrated to generate meaningful perception and then adaptive behaviors,which is called multisensory integration.Many studies related to multisensory integration have confirmed that multisensory integration can be regulated by multiple factors.For example,temporal correspondence,spatial correspondence,effectiveness of multisensory stimuli and attention factors,etc.have been widely studied.According to previous studies,the stimulus in the previous trial and the previous experience will affect the current stimulus judgment.The interaction between trials is called trial history.However,less well understood is Trial History,whereby the modality and spatial location of stimuli experienced during the previous trial shape multisensory performance during a subsequent trial.We employed a target–target paradigm to investigate how the target modality and spatial location of the previous trial affect multisensory integration under conditions of dividedmodalities attention and modality-specific selective attention.The experiment manipulates three independent variables: previous target modality(auditory,visual,and audiovisual targets),current target modality(auditory and/or visual,and audiovisual targets)and location validity(valid and invalid).In the experiment,visual,auditory and audiovisual targets are randomly presented on the left and right sides of the computer screen.The participants were asked to locate targets in both visual and auditory modalities(Experiment 1),auditory modality(Experiment 2),or visual modality(Experiment 3),which were presented on the same(repeat)or opposite(switch)location as the preceding trial.We found that both the previous target modality and the spatial location affected the subsequent multisensory integration effect in Experiment 1.Multisensory integration was the largest following the auditory and multisensory integration was enhanced in the valid locations compared with invalid locations.In Experiments 2 and 3,it was found that only the previous target modality affected the subsequent multisensory integration.Multisensory integration was the largest following the audiovisual targets and multisensory integration was no difference between the valid locations and invalid locations in Experiments 2 and 3.It was proved that trial history based on target modality and spatial location does affect multisensory integration,which is regulated by modality attention.These results indicate that the trial history continuously monitoring the brain system may influence the multisensory integration of the current trial by dynamically adjusting the allocation of attention resources formed in the previous trial.