Reading involves mapping combinations of a learned visual code (letters) onto meaning. Previous studies have shown that when visual word recognition is challenged by visual degradation, one way to mitigate these negative effects is to provide "top–down" contextual support through a written congruent sentence context. Crowding is a naturally occurring visual phenomenon that impairs object recognition and also affects the recognition of written stimuli during reading. Thus, access to a supporting semantic context via a written text is vulnerable to the detrimental impact of crowding on letters and words. Here, we suggest that an auditory sentence context may provide an alternative source of semantic information that is not influenced by crowding, thus providing “top–down” support cross-modally. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether adult readers can cross-modally compensate for crowding in visual word recognition using an auditory sentence context. The results show a significant cross-modal interaction between the congruency of the auditory sentence context and visual crowding, suggesting that interactions can occur across multiple levels of processing and across different modalities to support reading processes. These findings highlight the need for reading models to specify in greater detail how top–down, cross-modal and interactive mechanisms may allow readers to compensate for deficiencies at early stages of visual processing.

阅读涉及将学习到的视觉代码（字母）的组合映射到含义上。以前的研究表明，当视觉单词识别受到视觉质量下降的挑战时，减轻这些负面影响的一种方法是通过书面一致的句子上下文提供“自上而下”的上下文支持。拥挤是自然发生的视觉现象，会损害物体的识别能力，并且还会影响阅读过程中对书写刺激的识别。因此，通过书面文本访问支持语义上下文容易受到拥挤对字母和单词的不利影响。在这里，我们建议听觉句子上下文可以提供不受拥挤影响的语义信息的替代来源，从而以交叉模式提供“自上而下”的支持。本研究的目的是调查成年读者是否可以使用听觉句子语境交叉模态补偿视觉单词识别中的拥挤。结果表明，听觉句子语境与视觉拥挤之间存在显着的跨模式交互作用，这表明交互作用可以跨越多个层次的处理过程以及跨不同的模式来支持阅读过程。这些发现强调了阅读模型的必要性，以更详细地说明自上而下，交叉模式和交互机制如何使读者能够弥补视觉处理早期阶段的不足。结果表明，听觉句子语境与视觉拥挤之间存在显着的跨模式交互作用，这表明交互作用可以跨越多个层次的处理过程以及跨不同的模式来支持阅读过程。这些发现强调了阅读模型的必要性，以更详细地说明自上而下，交叉模式和交互机制如何使读者能够弥补视觉处理早期阶段的不足。结果表明，听觉句子语境与视觉拥挤之间存在显着的跨模式交互作用，这表明交互作用可以跨越多个层次的处理过程以及跨不同的模式来支持阅读过程。这些发现强调了阅读模型的必要性，以更详细地说明自上而下，交叉模式和交互机制如何使读者能够弥补视觉处理早期阶段的不足。