Visuo-Motor versus Audio-Motor Temporal Recalibration

Yoshimori Sugano, Mirjam Keetels, Jean Vroomen
Poster
Time: 2009-06-29  11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Last modified: 2009-06-04

Abstract


Purpose
Previous research has shown that the timing of the sensorimotor system is recalibrated after a brief exposure to a delayed feedback of voluntary actions. Here, we compared lag adaption for action-feedback in motor-auditory pairs versus motor-visual pairs.

Methods
Participants were repeatedly exposed to a constant lag (~100 ms) between their voluntary action (a tap) and a feedback stimulus (a visual flash or auditory click). After 240 exposure trials, participants performed a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task on the same tap-feedback pairs. A no-delay (~0 ms) adaptation phase was used as a control condition.

Results
Brief exposure to the action-feedback asynchrony resulted in a shift of the Point of Subjective Simultaneity (PSS) in the direction of the exposed lag in the motor-visual pair (a temporal recalibration effect, TRE, of 22 ms, p<.03), but not in the motor-auditory pair (TRE = 7 ms, NS). The Just Noticeable Differences (JNDs) were not changed by lag exposure (see Figure 1).

Conclusions
The PSS data suggested that motor-auditory temporal perception was less flexible than motor-visual one. The JND data showed that a temporal window of simultaneity did not widen by the lag exposure in both modalities.

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