Vision dominates at the preresponse level and audition dominates at the response level in cross-modal interaction: behavioral and neural evidence.

There are ongoing debates on the direction of sensory dominance in cross-modal interaction. In the present study, we demonstrate that the specific direction of sensory dominance depends on the level of processing: vision dominates at earlier stages, whereas audition dominates at later stages of cognitive processing. Moreover, these dominances are subserved by different neural networks. In three experiments, human participants were asked to attend to either visual or auditory modality while ignoring simultaneous stimulus inputs from the other modality. By manipulating three levels of congruency between the simultaneous visual and auditory inputs, congruent (C), incongruent at preresponse level (PRIC), and incongruent at response level (RIC), we differentiated the cross-modal conflict explicitly into preresponse (PRIC > C) and response (RIC > PRIC) levels. Behavioral data in the three experiments consistently suggested that visual distractors caused more interference to auditory processing than vice versa (i.e., the typical visual dominance) at the preresponse level, but auditory distractors caused more interference to visual processing than vice versa (i.e., the typical auditory dominance) at the response level regardless of experimental tasks, types of stimuli, or differential processing speeds in different modalities. Dissociable neural networks were revealed, with the default mode network being involved in the visual dominance at the preresponse level and the prefrontal executive areas being involved in the auditory dominance at the response level. The default mode network may be attracted selectively by irrelevant visual, rather than auditory, information via enhanced neural coupling with the ventral visual stream, resulting in visual dominance at the preresponse level.