ERP signatures of auditory awareness in cross-modal distractor-induced deafness

•This cross-modal study provides evidence that an inhibitory effect of multiple distractors on target detection (distractor-induced deafness) can also be observed when cue and target derive from different modalities.•In line with recent findings, access to an auditory target was indicated by an early frontal negativity, suggesting that this ERP component reliably indexes auditory awareness.•A sustained negativity in succession to the frontal negativity was also linked to successful target detection and might reflect a cross-modal spread of attention.•In contrast to previous unimodal studies, P3 amplitude was not significantly influenced by target access, but instead by overall detection performance. Previous research showed that dual-task processes such as the attentional blink are not always transferable from unimodal to cross-modal settings. This study investigated whether such a transfer can be stated for a distractor-induced impairment of target detection established in vision (distractor-induced blindness, DIB) and recently observed in the auditory modality (distractor-induced deafness, DID). A cross-modal DID effect was confirmed: The detection of an auditory target indicated by a visual cue was impaired if multiple auditory distractors preceded the target. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to identify psychophysiological correlates of target detection. A frontal negativity about 200 ms succeeded by a sustained, widespread negativity was associated with auditory target awareness. In contrast to unimodal findings, P3 amplitude was not enhanced for hits. The results support the notion that early frontal attentional processes are linked to auditory awareness, whereas the P3 does not seem to be a reliable indicator of target access.