title: Audio-tactile superiority over visuo-tactile and audio-visual combinations in the temporal resolution of synchrony perception.
abstract: To see whether there is a difference in temporal resolution of synchrony perception between audio-visual (AV), visuo-tactile (VT), and audio-tactile (AT) combinations, we compared synchrony-asynchrony discrimination thresholds of human participants. Visual and auditory stimuli were, respectively, a luminance-modulated Gaussian blob and an amplitude-modulated white noise. Tactile stimuli were mechanical vibrations presented to the index finger. All the stimuli were temporally modulated by either single pulses or repetitive-pulse trains. The results show that the temporal resolution of synchrony perception was similar for AV and VT (e.g., approximately 4 Hz for repetitive-pulse stimuli), but significantly higher for AT approximately 10 Hz). Apart from having a higher temporal resolution, however, AT synchrony perception was similar to AV synchrony perception in that participants could select matching features through attention, and a change in the matching-feature attribute had little effect on temporal resolution. The AT superiority in temporal resolution was indicated not only by synchrony-asynchrony discrimination but also by simultaneity judgments. Temporal order judgments were less affected by modality combination than the other two tasks.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan. w-fujisaki@aist.go.jp
authors.forename: Waka
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fujisaki
authors.forename: Shin'ya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishida
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004056:Differential Threshold; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D013997:Time Factors; D055698:Touch Perception; D014796:Visual Perception