Analysis of temporal perception for audio-visual stimulation

Abstract

In situations of perception, researches about audio-visual stimulation have generally found that audition prevails over vision in temporal perception, whereas vision is dominant over audition for spatial perception. Modality appropriateness to a given task generally determines the direction of inter-modality effect. However, we found a reverse effect in some situations where a change in the frequency of visual stimulation was associated with a perceived change in the frequency of auditory stimulation. The physical stimulus didn't always accord with the perception. Thus, we performed two different experiments to certain the influence of the orientation between auditory and visual stimulus, the color of visual stimulus and sex difference of testee with normal people. In first experiment, 12 participants were asked to judge the change in the frequency of audio-visual stimulation using a visual flicker and auditory flutter stimulation in the condition of same auditory and visual orientation. When auditory temporal cues were presented, the change in the frequency of the visual stimulation was associated with a perceived change in the frequency of the auditory stimulation apart from different or same visual and auditory orientation. In second experiment, 30 men and women were asked to judge the change in the frequency of audio-visual stimulation using a color of visual flicker and auditory flutter stimulation. The colors for visual stimulus are red and green. The accuracy of perception drops down in red. Men and women showed similar perceptual tendency however in case of women, the value of standard deviation is larger than that of men. These results imply that audiovisual asymmetry effects are influenced by the cues of visual and auditory information, such as the orientation between auditory and visual stimulus, the color of visual stimulus.