Sound can enhance visual representational momentum

Wataru Teramoto, Souta Hidaka, Jiro Gyoba, Yoichi Suzuki
Poster
Last modified: 2008-05-13

Abstract


Representational momentum is a phenomenon in which the remembered final position of a moving target is displaced in the direction of motion. This phenomenon has been reported in both the visual and auditory modalities. Here we investigated the crossmodal effect: the effect of concurrent sound on visual representational momentum. A visual target smoothly moved towards a center of the CRT display from left or right side, and disappeared at unpredictable positions. Participants judged whether a probe presented 500 ms after the target’s offset was to the left or right of the target’s final position. There were three sound conditions: no sound, constant noise, and “approaching noise� which had dynamic interaural time- and level-difference cues and whose overall intensity increased as the visual target approached the center of the display. Observed displacements were significantly larger for visual targets with approaching noise than those with no sound or constant noise. In the following experiment, we found that perceived velocity of the visual target was not correlated well with difference in displacement between the conditions. We speculate that relevant sound may enhance perceived fidelity of a moving visual object on the display, and consequently strengthen motion perception in the visual modality.

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