# Neural mechanisms of semantic guidance of audiovisual attention

> **NIH NIH F31** · GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $46,752

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Attention is fundamental to parsing the dynamic, multisensory, and semantically rich environments we encounter
in day-to-day life. The human sensory systems take in more information each moment than can be processed
at once, so a subset must be prioritized for further processing through attentional mechanisms. Information about
the same object or event can be initially processed by multiple sensory organs, so signals from different sensory
systems must additionally be matched and integrated to create the perception of a coherent multisensory world.
Disruptions to these attention and sensory integration mechanisms are thought to underlie the sensory
processing issues commonly observed in neurodevelopment disorders (e.g., autism, ADHD). Patients either
under-respond or over-respond to common sensory stimuli, causing distress and difficulty completing the tasks
of daily life. The mechanisms underlying these sensory processing symptoms are ill defined because of critical
gaps in our understanding of how attention operates in multisensory environments. Attention has largely been
studied within each sensory system separately, thus many factors remain poorly understood in the audiovisual
contexts that more closely resemble the environments we encounter in daily life. In the proposed research, I will
investigate one of these factors, semantics, which is a critical guide of attention in vision but has only been
studied narrowly in audiovisual contexts with stimuli that shared a source (e.g., a dog and its' bark). This narrow
focus means the mechanism of audiovisual attention benefit remains unknown and could include any semantic
relationship (a semantic-general mechanism) or be specific to the relationship of sharing a source (a source-
specific mechanism). In Aim 1, I will characterize the degree to which semantic relatedness influences attentional
prioritization, which will be measured both by visual search efficiency in study 1 and prioritization in early visual
cortex at object locations in study 2. Attentional prioritization that scales with semantic relatedness would suggest
a semantic-general mechanism. In Aim 2, I will identify the neural mechanism of the shared-source benefit in
audiovisual search, specifically examining the time course to understand the relative contributions of attentional
and semantic processing. Investigating these mechanisms will provide a more robust understanding of the role
of semantics in guiding attention in real world environments, which are frequently both multisensory and
semantically rich. Ultimately, understanding basic attentional principles will support future research into the
sensory processing issues so common in neurodevelopment disease, including potential treatments that allow
patients to better manage sensory under- and over-responsiveness.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10606205
- **Project number:** 1F31EY034030-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kira Wegner-Clemens
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $46,752
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-01 → 2025-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10606205

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10606205, Neural mechanisms of semantic guidance of audiovisual attention (1F31EY034030-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10606205. Licensed CC0.

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