Auditory footsteps affect visual biological motion orientation detection

Ana Catarina Mendonça, Jorge Almeida Santos
Poster
Last modified: 2008-05-15

Abstract


This study investigated audiovisual interaction in the perception of the direction of biological motion using Point-Light-Walkers (PLW). It continues the work of Vanrie, Dekeyeser & Verfaillie (2004) about the bistable character and the perceptual bias of PLW, which has shown that ambiguous PLW are preferably interpreted as being oriented towards the viewer. Each participant made judgements about the direction of a PLW’s motion in three conditions: visual, audiovisual and auditory. It was found that the auditory footsteps simultaneous and congruent with the visual representations diminished but didn’t eliminate the visual bias. The reaction times reveal a strong bimodal facilitation effect, even when both stimuli could be interpreted as incongruent.

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