Voluntary movement affects simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli presented to a non-moving body part.
The simultaneous perception of multimodal sensory information has a crucial role for effective reactions to the external environment. Voluntary movements are known to occasionally affect simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli presented to the moving body part. However, little is known about spatial limits on the effect of voluntary movements on simultaneous perception, especially when tactile stimuli are presented to a non-moving body part. We examined the effect of voluntary movement on the simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli presented to the non-moving body part. We considered the possible mechanism using a temporal order judgement task under three experimental conditions: voluntary movement, where participants voluntarily moved their right index finger and judged the temporal order of auditory and tactile stimuli presented to their non-moving left index finger; passive movement; and no movement. During voluntary movement, the auditory stimulus needed to be presented before the tactile stimulus so that they were perceived as occurring simultaneously. This subjective simultaneity differed significantly from the passive movement and no movement conditions. This finding indicates that the effect of voluntary movement on simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli extends to the non-moving body part.
Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
Qiao
Q
Hao
Department of Computer Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
Hiroki
H
Ora
Department of Computer Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
Ken-Ichiro
K
Ogawa
Department of Computer Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.|Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering (RACE), the University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan.
Taiki
T
Ogata
Department of Computer Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan.
Yoshihiro
Y
Miyake
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D018594:Human Body; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult