ABSTRACT
The attentional facilitation effects may be maximal only when the cue and target events are actually located in the same functional region of space in a directionally congruent manner. This chapter presents a research that demonstrates attentional facilitation will only occur if the warning signal and target event are both located within the same functional region of space, while decisional facilitation can occur if the cue and target are directionally congruent. In a research article published in 1999, C. Spence and J. Driver argued that the multisensory warning signals that have been used to date may not have been optimized for the human perceptual system in terms of the relative time of onset of the various sensory components of the warning signal. In particular, laboratory-based research has suggested that humans may be optimized to respond to audiovisual multisensory events occurring at a distance of approximately 10 m.
