How attentional resources of the same or across sensory modalities and task load affect cognitive performance? A multi-sensory integration study

ABSTRACT This study examined how attentional resources of the same or across sensory modalities with varying levels of task load affect cognitive performance. A total of 120 young adults completed an experiment that simultaneously processed either visual–visual (V–V) or visual–auditory (V–A) stimuli. A mixed ANOVA revealed that performance in the V–V experiment was superior to the V–A experiment. Furthermore, performance was significantly better for single tasks relative to dual tasks. The interaction effect showed that increased task load significantly impacted the performance in the V–V experiment but not in the V–A experiment. The findings implied that multi-sensory integration is only more manageable when information processing involves the same type of (visual) sensory modality and with low task load, but less effective for high-level attentional tasks even with the same sensory modality. The effectiveness of cross-modal multi-sensory integration can be compromised potentially due to the inhibitory effect of audio over visual information.