Only visible flicker helps flutter: Tactile-visual integration breaks in the absence of visual awareness

Combining information from multiple senses enhances our perception of the world. Whether we need to be aware of all stimuli to benefit from multisensory integration, however, is still under investigation. Here, we tested whether tactile frequency perception benefits from the presence of congruent visual flicker even if the flicker is so rapid that it is perceptually fused into a steady light and therefore invisible. Our participants completed a tactile frequency discrimination task given either unisensory tactile or congruent tactile-visual stimulation. Tactile and tactile-visual test frequencies ranged from far below to far above participants' flicker fusion threshold (determined separately). For frequencies distinctively below their flicker fusion threshold, participants performed significantly better given tactile-visual stimulation than when presented with only tactile stimuli. Yet, for frequencies above their flicker fusion threshold, participants' tactile frequency perception did not profit from the presence of congruent but likely fused and thus invisible visual flicker. The results matched the predictions of an ideal-observer model in which tactile-visual integration is conditional on awareness of both stimuli. In contrast, it was impossible to reproduce the observed results with a model that assumed tactile-visual integration proceeds irrespective of stimulus awareness. In sum, we revealed that the benefits of congruent visual stimulation for tactile flutter frequency perception depend on the visibility of the visual flicker, suggesting that multisensory integration requires awareness.