Does perceptual grouping precede multisensory integration? Evidence from the crossmodal dynamic capture task
Poster

Daniel Sanabria
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, England

Salvador Soto-Faraco
Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

Jason Chan
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, England

Charles Spence
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, England

     Abstract ID Number: 65
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 20, 2003

Abstract
We investigated whether the perceptual grouping of a series of sequentially presented visual stimuli occurred before or after the multisensory integration of auditory and visual motion information, using an adaptation of the crossmodal dynamic capture task (Soto-Faraco et al., 2002). In a typical crossmodal dynamic capture experiment, participants’ perception of the direction in which a pair of sounds appear to move is often captured (or dominated) by the direction of simultaneously-presented, but task-irrelevant visual stimuli. Participants in our experiments discriminated the direction of two sequentially presented sounds (moving left-to-right or vice versa), while simultaneously trying to ignore the direction of movement of the visual distractor lights. We used the principles of perceptual grouping to vary the direction of apparent motion of the visual stimuli (consisting of 2, 4, or 6 lights). Across several experiments, we demonstrate that the visual capture of the perceived direction of auditory motion is dependent on the perceptual grouping taking place within vision. Our results show that intramodal perceptual grouping can take place prior to the multisensory integration of dynamic motion information between different sensory modalities.

Soto-Faraco, S., Lyons, J., Gazzaniga, M., Spence, C., & Kingstone, A. (2002). The ventriloquist in motion: Illusory capture of dynamic information across sensory modalities. Cognitive Brain Research, 14, 139-146.