Teasing apart the effects of synesthetic congruency on temporal order judgements B McCoy, R van Lier |
|---|
Donders Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
|
| The temporal ventriloquism effect is observed when an auditory stimulus presented in temporal proximity to a visual stimulus changes the perceived temporal onset of the visual stimulus. Recent studies have found that pitch-size synesthetic congruency may be important factor. According to these, when congruent tones are presented, one before and one after two temporally- and spatially-separated visual disks, temporal order judgements of the disks are easier due to binding of the audio-visual pairs. If the tones and disks are incongruent, it is harder to distinguish this temporal order. In the present study, we focus on pitch-contrast synesthetic congruency (e.g., high tones and bright disks; low tones and dark disks). We demonstrate that the instruction provided to participants has a significant impact on the outcome of the data, which explains inconsistencies in the results of previous studies. We also demonstrate better temporal order judgements for incongruent trials at shorter visual-visual intervals, changing to better judgements for congruent trials at longer intervals. This suggests an initial contrast effect, whereby the visual and auditory systems first optimize processing of the individual features within each modality, followed by an assimilation effect, when integration occurs and the system becomes more sensitive to audiovisual congruencies. |
| Up Home |
|---|