title: Rhythmicity and cross-modal temporal cues facilitate detection.
abstract: Temporal structure in the environment often has predictive value for anticipating the occurrence of forthcoming events. In this study we investigated the influence of two types of predictive temporal information on the perception of near-threshold auditory stimuli: 1) intrinsic temporal rhythmicity within an auditory stimulus stream and 2) temporally-predictive visual cues. We hypothesized that combining predictive temporal information within- and across-modality should decrease the threshold at which sounds are detected, beyond the advantage provided by each information source alone. Two experiments were conducted in which participants had to detect tones in noise. Tones were presented in either rhythmic or random sequences and were preceded by a temporally predictive visual signal in half of the trials. We show that detection intensities are lower for rhythmic (vs. random) and audiovisual (vs. auditory-only) presentation, independent from response bias, and that this effect is even greater for rhythmic audiovisual presentation. These results suggest that both types of temporal information are used to optimally process sounds that occur at expected points in time (resulting in enhanced detection), and that multiple temporal cues are combined to improve temporal estimates. Our findings underscore the flexibility and proactivity of the perceptual system which uses within- and across-modality temporal cues to anticipate upcoming events and process them optimally.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: ten Oever
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA; The Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA.
authors.forename: Charles E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Schroeder
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Poeppel
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Department of Educational Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Education and Institute Learn, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nienke
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: van Atteveldt
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY 10032, USA; The Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962, USA; Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Electronic address: elana.zion-golumbic@biu.ac.il.
authors.forename: Elana
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zion-Golumbic
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010507:Periodicity; D011594:Psychometrics; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Audiovisual integration; Detection; Rhythmicity; Temporal prediction