Vibro-tactile and visual asynchronies: sensitivity and consistency.
We investigated the consistency between tactually and visually designated empty time intervals. In a forced-choice discrimination task, participants judged whether the second of two intervals was shorter or longer than the first interval. Two pulses defined the intervals. The pulse was either a vibro-tactile burst presented to the fingertip, or a foveally presented white square. The comparisons were made for uni-modal and cross-modal intervals. We used four levels of standard interval durations in the range of 100- 800 ms. The results showed that tactile empty intervals must be 8.5% shorter to be perceived as long as visual intervals. This cross-modal bias is larger for small intervals and decreases with increasing standard intervals. The Weber fractions (the threshold divided by the standard interval) are 20% and are constant over the standard intervals. This indicates that the Weber law holds for the range of interval lengths tested. Furthermore, the Weber fractions are consistent over uni-modal and cross-modal comparisons, which indicates that there is no additional noise involved in the cross-modal comparisons.
van Erp
Jan B F
JB
TNO Human Factors, PO Box 23, NL 3769 ZG Soesterberg, The Netherlands. vanerp@tm.tno.nl
Werkhoven
Peter J
PJ
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*