Audiovisual bounce-inducing effect: Attention alone does not explain why the discs are bouncing.

Abstract

Two discs moving from opposite points in space, overlapping and stopping at the other disc's starting point, can be seen as either bouncing or streaming through each other. With silent displays, observers report the discs as streaming, whereas if a sound is played when the discs touch each other, observers report the discs as bouncing. The origin of the switch from streaming to bouncing response is not known yet. The sound either shifts perception toward that of an impact-elastic event (i.e., a bounce) or subtracts the attention that is necessary to perceive the discs as streaming. We used either impact-similar (abrupt amplitude attack, gradual decay) or impact-dissimilar sounds (gradual amplitude attack, abrupt decay) and found that the first sounds induce the bouncing response, whereas the latter, although as distracting as the first, render streaming and bouncing responses equally frequent at most. We interpret the audiovisual bouncing effect as resulting from attention subtraction, which raises the number of bounce responses in comparison with silent displays, and from perception, which further increments the number of bounce responses and turns the response into a strong bounce response.

Surveying the Temporal Structure of Sounds Used in Music Perception

“…Because the full explanation for these findings remains undetermined, other members of our research team are currently exploring this issue to further understand the underlying differences in the perceptual processing of tones differing only in their amplitude envelopes. This work will complement and extend previous studies demonstrating the effect of amplitude envelope in a variety of auditory perception tasks (Grassi & Casco, 2009;Neuhoff, 2001;Schlauch, Ries, & DiGiovanni, 2001). …”

“…As sounds with different amplitude envelopes can lead to qualitatively different outcomes on a variety experiments (Grassi & Casco, 2009;Schutz & Kubovy, 2009b;Schutz & Lipscomb, 2007;Schutz & Stefanucci, 2010;Vallet et al, 2014), it is worthwhile to ponder the degree to which features of the sounds used in research should parallel features of the sounds heard in natural situations. Amplitude envelope is a parameter no less important than other stimulus characteristics more commonly defined within our survey (i.e., spectral information, duration and/or sound intensity), and likely more important than others (i.e., the specific model of tone generators and headphones/speakers used to deliver a pure tone).…”

“…Intriguingly, documentation of categorical differences in the perception of tones differing only in their amplitude envelopes is not limited to this paradigm alone, with envelope known to affect audio-visual integration in the ''bounce-or-pass-through'' illusion (Grassi & Casco, 2009). Furthermore, subsequent research illustrates significant differences in associative memory tasks involving four note sequences of percussive and flat tones (Schutz & Stefanucci, 2010), as well as differences in the duration judgment strategies employed when estimating their length (Vallet, Shore, & Schutz, 2014).…”

The unity assumption facilitates cross-modal binding of musical, non-speech stimuli: The role of spectral and amplitude envelope cues

“…Bounce percepts increase significantly more when a decaying, impact-like sound occurs concurrent with the dots' overlap than when this sound increases in amplitude by a similar amount (Grassi & Casco, 2009). This suggests that amplitude envelope, in acting as a cue for event identification, helps facilitate integration of auditory and visual signals.…”

Stream/bounce perception and the effect of depth cues in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

“…However, this tendency appears to be more readily perturbed in chimpanzees. Previous studies have identified multiple factors that can alternate stream/bounce perception (Bertenthal et al, 1993;Grassi & Casco, 2009;Kawabe & Miura, 2006;A. B. Sekuler & R. Sekuler, 1999;K.…”