Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

According to most recent theories of multisensory integration,weighting of different modalities depends on the reliability ofthe involved sensory estimates. Top-down modulations havebeen studied to a lesser degree. Furthermore, it is still debatedwhether working memory maintains multisensory informationin a distributed modal fashion, or in terms of an integrated rep-resentation. To investigate whether multisensory integrationis modulated by task relevance and to probe the nature of theworking memory encodings, we combined an object interac-tion task with a size estimation task in an immersive virtualreality. During the object interaction, we induced multisen-sory conflict between seen and felt grip aperture. Both, visualand proprioceptive size estimation showed a clear modulationby the experimental manipulation. Thus, the results suggestthat multisensory integration is not only driven by reliability,but is also biased by task demands. Furthermore, multisensoryinformation seems to be represented by means of interactivemodal representations.