The simultaneous perception of auditory–tactile stimuli in voluntary movement

Abstract

The simultaneous perception of multimodal information in the environment during voluntary movement is very important for effective reactions to the environment. Previous studies have found that voluntary movement affects the simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli. However, the results of these experiments are not completely consistent, and the differences may be attributable to methodological differences in the previous studies. In this study, we investigated the effect of voluntary movement on the simultaneous perception of auditory and tactile stimuli using a temporal order judgment task with voluntary movement, involuntary movement, and no movement. To eliminate the potential effect of stimulus predictability and the effect of spatial information associated with large-scale movement in the previous studies, we randomized the interval between the start of movement and the first stimulus, and used small-scale movement. As a result, the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) during voluntary movement shifted from the tactile stimulus being first during involuntary movement or no movement to the auditory stimulus being first. The just noticeable difference (JND), an indicator of temporal resolution, did not differ across the three conditions. These results indicate that voluntary movement itself affects the PSS in auditory–tactile simultaneous perception, but it does not influence the JND. In the discussion of these results, we suggest that simultaneous perception may be affected by the efference copy.

Auditory-Somatosensory Temporal Sensitivity Improves When the Somatosensory Event Is Caused by Voluntary Body Movement

“…This direction of bias in PSS has been reported repeatedly for passive audiotactile TOJ (Zampini et al, 2005; Nishi et al, 2014; Hao et al, 2015), suggesting that the tactile event should be presented slightly earlier than the auditory one for it to be perceived simultaneously with the auditory event. We observed no significant differences of PSSs between the conditions.…”

“…Previous studies have examined the effects of voluntary movements on temporal perception of sensory events without causal relationship between voluntary movements and sensory events (Frissen et al, 2012; Nishi et al, 2014; Hao et al, 2015). In contrast, the present study examined whether voluntary movements improve perceptual sensitivity to temporal disparity between mutltisensory events when those events are virtually caused by the voluntary movements.…”

“…They compared the effects of voluntary and involuntary movements on multisensory temporal sensitivity, but the findings are not consistent even among the studies from the same laboratory. Although no significant differences in JNDs for the temporal disparity of auditory-somatosensory events between the voluntary and involuntary movement conditions have been reported (Frissen et al, 2012; Hao et al, 2015), improvement (Nishi et al, 2014) and even deterioration (Hao et al, 2016) of the JNDs has also been observed in the voluntary movement condition compared to passive and involuntary ones. The reason for this inconsistency between the findings of the previous studies is unclear.…”

“…More recent studies have tried to further assess the effects of voluntary movements on multisensory temporal perception by introducing an involuntary movement condition in which the participants’ arm or finger is moved passively by a device (Frissen et al, 2012; Nishi et al, 2014; Hao et al, 2015, 2016). They compared the effects of voluntary and involuntary movements on multisensory temporal sensitivity, but the findings are not consistent even among the studies from the same laboratory.…”

The Use of Audio Stimulation to Affect Sensorimotor Learning

“…As this was a self-paced activity, subjects' attention was split between perception of external stimuli and internal rhythm generation [13].…”