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The temporal window of audio-tactile integration in speech perception
Bryan Gick1, Yoko Ikegami, Donald Derrick
1Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. gick@interchange.ubc.ca
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|November 30, 2010
Summary
Multisensory integration is asymmetric, favoring tactile signals arriving after auditory stimuli. This temporal asymmetry in audio-tactile perception suggests the brain adjusts for varying signal speeds.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Sensory Perception
Background:
- Cross-modal integration, particularly audio-visual (AV), exhibits temporal asymmetry.
- This asymmetry suggests that the brain's processing of simultaneous sensory information is not uniform across all sensory combinations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if the temporal asymmetry observed in audio-visual perception extends to audio-tactile integration.
- To determine the directionality and magnitude of temporal integration windows in combined auditory and tactile stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Participants were presented with synchronous and asynchronous auditory (voiced/unvoiced stops) and tactile (cutaneous air puffs) signals.
- The temporal window of integration was assessed by measuring enhancement and interference effects.
Main Results:
- A significant temporal asymmetry was found in the enhancement effect, with a wider integration window (200 ms) when tactile stimuli followed auditory stimuli.
- A narrower integration window (50 ms) was observed when tactile stimuli preceded auditory stimuli.
- The interference effect did not show the same degree of asymmetry.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the generalization of asymmetric cross-modal integration to the audio-tactile domain.
- This asymmetry suggests a neural mechanism that compensates for differences in the physical transmission speeds of various sensory signals.
- Perceivers adapt their integration processes based on the expected arrival times of multimodal sensory input.
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