Interaction of spatial and temporal processing in the context of audio-visual synchrony judgment and temporal-order judgment L T Boenke1, R Höchenberger1, A Zeghbib2, D Alais3, F W Ohl4 |
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1Systems Physiology of Learning, Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Germany |
| While both synchrony judgment (SJ) and temporal order judgment (TOJ) have been used to characterize temporal processing of multisensory stimuli, the exact nature in which both measures differ is still a matter of debate. Quite generally however, a principal difference seems to be that SJ can be achieved by focusing only on the temporal relationship of two stimuli, whereas TOJ requires focusing on an additional stimulus dimension, like color, location, etc. in order to perform the task. On the basis of the modality appropriateness hypothesis (performance in the auditory and visual modality can benefit relatively more from temporal, and respectively, spatial cues) it can therefore be hypothesized that, by switching from an SJ-task to a spatialized TOJ-task (e.g. testing on which side a stimulus was perceived first), the visual would benefit more than the auditory modality. We therefore used a 2×2-within-participants repeated-measures-design (2 TASKS: SJ vs. TOJ, 2 MODALITIES: vision vs. audition) to test this hypothesis. We found a significant (p=0.02) effect for MODALITY and significant (p<0.01) interaction. Duncan's post-hoc test confirmed that the visual modality benefitted from the switching to a spatialized TOJ task while performance in the auditory modality deteriorated. An additional electrophysiological experiment further supported this hypothesis. |
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