Figure 1.

Illustration of how sensory dominance is conceptualized. Left panel: Congruent visual–olfactory stimuli (e.g., lilac picture and lilac odor) lead to a bimodal activation of the same lilac representation under assumptions of no dominance, visual dominance, or olfactory dominance. Middle panel: Incongruent visual–olfactory stimuli (e.g., pear picture and lilac odor) lead to a competitive activation, resulting in between-modality inhibition of the two representations. Under no dominance, inhibition strength is symmetric, resulting in an equal interference effect on behavioral results. Under visual dominance, the olfactory representation is to a greater extent inhibited by the visual representation, resulting in delayed olfactory decisions. Under olfactory dominance, on the other hand, the olfactory representation has a stronger inhibitory effect on the visual representation, resulting in delayed visual decisions. Right panel: Hypothesized response times corresponding to each dominance assumption.