EFFECT OF SAME-MODALITY AND DIFFERENT-MODALITY SPATIAL CUES ON AUDITORY AND VISUAL TARGET IDENTIFICATION

A target identification paradigm was used to study cross-modal spatial cuing effects on auditory and visual target identification. Each tria l consisted of an auditory or visual spatial cue followed by an audito ry or visual target. The cue and target could be either of the same mo dality (within-modality conditions) or of different modalities (betwee n-modalities conditions). In 3 experiments, a larger cue validity effe ct was apparent on within-modality trials than on between-modalities t rials. In addition, the likelihood of identifying a significant cross- modal cuing effect was observed to depend on the predictability of the cue-target relation. These effects are interpreted as evidence (a) of separate auditory and visual spatial attention mechanisms and (b) tha t target identification may be influenced by spatial cues of another m odality but that this effect is primarily dependent on the engagement of endogenous attentional mechanisms.