Maintaining object correspondence among multiple moving objects is an essential task of the perceptual system in many everyday life activities. A substantial body of research has confirmed that observers are able to track multiple target objects amongst identical distractors based only on their spatiotemporal information. However, naturalistic tasks typically involve the integration of information from more than one modality, and there is limited research investigating whether auditory and audio-visual cues improve tracking. In two experiments, we asked participants to track either five target objects or three versus five target objects amongst similarly indistinguishable distractor objects for 14 s. During the tracking interval, the target objects bounced occasionally against the boundary of a centralised orange circle. A visual cue, an auditory cue, neither or both coincided with these collisions. Following the motion interval, the participants were asked to indicate all target objects. Across both experiments and both set sizes, our results indicated that visual and auditory cues increased tracking accuracy although visual cues were more effective than auditory cues. Audio-visual cues, however, did not increase tracking performance beyond the level of purely visual cues for both high and low load conditions. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings for multiple object tracking as well as for the principles of multisensory integration.

保持多个运动对象之间的对象对应关系是许多日常生活活动中感知系统的一项基本任务。大量研究证实，观察者仅根据时空信息就能够在相同的干扰物中跟踪多个目标对象。然而，自然主义任务通常涉及整合来自多个模态的信息，并且研究听觉和视听线索是否能改善跟踪的研究有限。在两个实验中，我们要求参与者在 14 秒内跟踪同样无法区分的干扰对象中的五个目标对象或三个与五个目标对象。在跟踪间隔期间，目标对象偶尔会在一个集中的橙色圆圈的边界上反弹。视觉提示，听觉提示，两者都没有或都与这些碰撞同时发生。在运动间隔之后，参与者被要求指出所有目标对象。在两个实验和两个集合大小中，我们的结果表明视觉和听觉线索提高了跟踪准确性，尽管视觉线索比听觉线索更有效。然而，在高负载和低负载条件下，视听提示并没有将跟踪性能提高到超出纯视觉提示的水平。我们讨论了我们的发现对多目标跟踪以及多感官整合原理的理论意义。我们的结果表明，视觉和听觉提示提高了跟踪准确性，尽管视觉提示比听觉提示更有效。然而，在高负载和低负载条件下，视听提示并没有将跟踪性能提高到超出纯视觉提示的水平。我们讨论了我们的发现对多目标跟踪以及多感官整合原理的理论意义。我们的结果表明，视觉和听觉提示提高了跟踪准确性，尽管视觉提示比听觉提示更有效。然而，在高负载和低负载条件下，视听提示并没有将跟踪性能提高到超出纯视觉提示的水平。我们讨论了我们的发现对多目标跟踪以及多感官整合原理的理论意义。