Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.07.30.229617v1?rss=1 Authors: Turoman, N., Tivadar, R., Retsa, C., Murray, M. M., Matusz, P. J. Abstract: Traditional research on attentional control has largely focused on single senses and the importance of one s behavioural goals in controlling attentional selection, thus limiting its generalizability to real-world contexts. These contexts are both inherently multisensory and contain regularities that also contribute to attentional control. To get a better understanding of how attention is controlled in the real world, we investigated how visual attentional capture was impacted by top-down goals (indexed by task-set contingent attentional capture) and the multisensory nature of stimuli, as well as top-down contextual factors such as semantic relationships and temporal predictability of stimulus onset. Participants performed a multisensory version of Folk et al. (1992) spatial cueing paradigm, while their 129-channel event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Reaction-time spatial cueing served as a behavioural measure of attentional control, while the N2pc ERP component was analysed both canonically and using a multivariate electrical neuroimaging (EN) framework. Behaviourally, target-congruent colour distractors captured attention more strongly when they were simultaneous than semantically congruent (nontarget-congruent colour distractors failed to capture attention), with no behavioural evidence for context modulating multisensory enhancements of capture. However, our EN analyses revealed context-based influences on attention to both visual and multisensory distractors, on how strongly they activated brain networks and in the type of activated brain networks. In both cases, these context-driven brain response modulations occurred early on (long before the traditional N2pc time-window), with network-based modulations at app. 30ms post-distractor, followed by strength-based modulations at app. 100ms post-distractor. Our findings revealed that in naturalistic settings, meaning, next to predictions (spatial, temporal etc.) might be a second important source of contextual information utilised to facilitate goal-directed attention. Therein, attentional selection is controlled by an interaction of one s goals, stimulus perceptual (multisensory-driven) salience and an interaction of stimulus meaning and its predictability. Our study demonstrates how investigating more traditional, lab-studied control mechanisms and processes more typical for everyday life reveals a complex interplay between goal-, stimulus- and context-based processes in attentional control. As such, our findings call for a revision of traditional models of visual attentional control to account for the role of both contextual and multisensory control mechanisms. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info