Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 13, 2025
Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback
Published on: May 23, 2019
The development of visuotactile congruency effects for sequences of events
Alan O'Dowd1, Sarah M Cooney2, Francesca Sorgini3
1School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Insights
Children
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Sensory processing
Background:
- Infants show sensitivity to temporal coherence in visual and tactile signals.
- Understanding how bidirectional visuotactile interactions develop throughout childhood remains unclear.
- The impact of viewing a body part on children's perception of visuotactile events is unexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate age-related changes in bidirectional visuotactile interactions in children.
- Examine crossmodal interference between visual and tactile stimuli across different age groups.
- Determine if viewing a body influences children's perception of visuotactile sequences.
Main Methods:
- Participants (children aged 5-12 years and adults) discriminated target events in one modality while ignoring distractors in the other.
- A hand or object image was presented during the visuotactile task.
- Crossmodal interference was measured by comparing performance with and without distractors.
Main Results:
- Younger children (5-9 years) exhibited greater crossmodal interference from visual distractors on tactile targets compared to the reverse.
- This interference was most pronounced when visual distractors outnumbered tactile targets, suggesting a "fission-like" effect.
- Viewing a hand or object did not modulate visuotactile interactions in any age group.
Conclusions:
- Discontinuous visual information significantly interferes with tactile discrimination of event sequences in early and middle childhood.
- Findings suggest developmental shifts in sensory dominance, selective attention, and multisensory integration.
- Future research should explore these age-related changes in sensory processing more deeply.
Abstract:
Sensitivity to the temporal coherence of visual and tactile signals increases perceptual reliability and is evident during infancy. However, it is not clear how, or whether, bidirectional visuotactile interactions change across childhood. Furthermore, no study has explored whether viewing a body modulates how children perceive visuotactile sequences of events. Here, children aged 5-7 years (n = 19), 8 and 9 years (n = 21), and 10-12 years (n = 24) and adults (n = 20) discriminated the number of target events (one or two) in a task-relevant modality (touch or vision) and ignored distractors (one or two) in the opposing modality. While participants performed the task, an image of either a hand or an object was presented. Children aged 5-7 years and 8 and 9 years showed larger crossmodal interference from visual distractors when discriminating tactile targets than the converse. Across age groups, this was strongest when two visual distractors were presented with one tactile target, implying a "fission-like" crossmodal effect (perceiving one event as two events). There was no influence of visual context (viewing a hand or non-hand image) on visuotactile interactions for any age group. Our results suggest robust interference from discontinuous visual information on tactile discrimination of sequences of events during early and middle childhood. These findings are discussed with respect to age-related changes in sensory dominance, selective attention, and multisensory processing.
