Task-relevant spatialized auditory cues enhance attention orientation and peripheral target detection in natural scenes

Abstract

Concurrent auditory stimuli have been shown to enhance detection of abstract visual targets in experimental setups with little ecological validity. We presented11 participants, wearing an eye-tracking device, with a visual detection task in animmersive audiovisual environment replicating a real-world environment. Theparticipants were to fixate on a visual target and to press a key when they wereconfident of having detected the target. The visual world was accompanied by a taskrelevantor task-irrelevant spatialized sound scene with different onset asynchronies.Our findings indicate task-relevant auditory cues to aid in orienting to and detectinga peripheral but not central visual target. The enhancement is amplified with anincreasing amount of audio lead