Asynchrony adaptation induces non-uniform changes in perceived timing

Neil Roach, James Heron, David Whitaker, Paul McGraw
Poster
Time: 2009-06-29  11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Last modified: 2009-06-04

Abstract


We typically perceive external events as coherent multisensory entities – if a balloon pops in front of us for example, we see and hear it happen simultaneously. That this occurs is not trivial, given that considerable differences exist between both the speed of light and sound through air, and the rate at which each is transduced into neural signals by our senses. A flexible strategy the brain could employ to support accurate temporal perception might be to monitor the temporal statistics (e.g. cross-correlation) of sensory input and correct for pervasive delays between modalities. Recent studies demonstrating that an observer’s point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) can be altered by a short period of exposure to a consistent temporal delay are consistent with this view (e.g. Fujisaki, Shimojo, Kashino & Nishida, 2004; Vroomen, Keetels, de Gelder & Bertelson, 2004). However, at present it is unclear whether these experience-dependent changes are specific to the perception of simultaneous events, or are indicative of a general recalibration of perceived timing. To address this issue, we measured the effect of asynchrony adaptation on the perception of a wide range of sub-second temporal relationships. Observers were required to estimate the magnitude of the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between pairs of brief auditory (broadband click convolved with head-related transfer functions) and visual (isotropic Gaussian blob) stimuli with and without prior adaptation to a fixed asynchrony (± 100ms SOA). In a preliminary analysis, we used the polarity of perceived SOA estimates (i.e. visual-first or auditory-first) to reconstruct psychometric functions for temporal order discrimination and derive PSS estimates. Shifts in the PSS following adaptation were comparable to those reported in previous studies. More detailed analysis of the dataset revealed that adaptation-induced biases were not uniform across the range of SOAs tested. Surprisingly, we found that the largest shifts in perceived timing occurred for SOAs of opposite polarity to that of the adapting stimulus (i.e. adapting to an auditory lead increased the perceived magnitude of subsequent visual leads). These results are inconsistent with a simple recalibration mechanism tasked with correcting relative processing delays between sensory modalities.

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