The Attention Network Test (ANT) uses visual stimuli to separately
assess the attentional skills of alerting (improved performance following
a warning cue), spatial orienting (an additional benefit when the warning
cue also cues target location), and executive control (impaired
performance when a target stimulus contains conflicting information). This
study contrasted performance on auditory and visual versions of the ANT to
determine whether the measures it obtains are influenced by presentation
modality. Forty healthy volunteers completed both auditory and visual
tests. Reaction-time measures of executive control were of a similar
magnitude and significantly correlated, suggesting that executive control
might be a supramodal resource. Measures of alerting were also comparable
across tasks. In contrast, spatial-orienting benefits were obtained only
in the visual task. Auditory spatial cues did not improve response times
to auditory targets presented at the cued location. The different
spatial-orienting measures could reflect either separate orienting
resources for each perceptual modality, or an interaction between a
supramodal orienting resource and modality-specific perceptual processing
(JINS, 2006, 12, 485–492.)