| Summary: | Crossmodal correspondences influence perceptual performance in adults, infants, and even non-human primates across a variety of different sensory modalities and dimensions, including in tasks involving speeded detection, discrimination, and categorization. However, to date, it is still unclear whether and how correspondences could modulate post-perceptual processes, such as working memory (WM). Here we investigated this issue using a bimodal (audiovisual) 2-back task. In Experiment 1, three kinds of correspondences were used: audio/visual numerosity, pitch/shape, and pitch/elevation, each presented congruently (e.g., for numerosity: three auditory tones along with three visual shapes) or incongruently (3tones/2shapes). Participants attended to the visual or auditory modalities, or both, simultaneously. The results revealed faster target-detection latencies following congruent as compared to incongruent stimulation, especially for numerosity congruence. In Experiment 2, we therefore focused on numerosity, varying the correspondence of the unattended modality, thus having correspondences at both sample (e.g., 3tones/3shapes) and target (e.g., 3tones/3shapes), only at sample (sample: 3tones/3shapes; target: 3tones/2shapes), only at target (sample: 3tones/2shapes; target: 3tones/3shapes), or never. In order to investigate the format of the encoded information we also included “symbolic” quantities (i.e., visually/auditorily-presented digits). The results confirmed the facilitation of correspondences on WM performance, highlighting that the effect arises when the correspondence is at the target display, thus affecting response selection. Moreover, the experiment revealed modal differences in the effect, showing how symbolic information affects the auditory and visual modalities differently. Overall, these findings highlight the impact of crossmodal correspondences on WM processing, adding new light on the link between perceptual and post-perceptual stages of human information processing.
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