Effects of attentional effort on cross-modal audio-visual competitive attentional selection - an fMRI-study

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The concept of biased competition is influential within the cognitive neuroscience of attention. Processes of biased competition are very likely reflected in the “attentional blink (AB)” phenomenon. However, the AB picture is inconsistent especially in the cross-modal case. It has been suggested that AB critically depends upon the degree of activation of attentional capacities, with a smaller degree of activation causing reductions in the AB. Yet, this factor is uncontrolled in AB experiments and would constitute the reason why results vary. In the current project we examine the relevance of the degree of activation for AB by experimentally manipulating attentional effort by means of reward manipulation. This will be done within and between sensory modalities. Experimental effects will be analyzed at a behavioural and neuronal level by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).