General tau theory as a model to evaluate audiovisual interplay in interceptive actions

Abstract

When interacting with the environment, sensory information is essential to guide movements. Picking up the appropriate sensory information (both visual and auditory) about the progression of an event is required to reach the right place at the right time. In this study, we aimed to see if general tau theory could explain the audiovisual guidance of movement in interceptive action (an interception task). The specific contributions of auditory and visual sensory information were tested by timing synchronous and asynchronous audiovisual interplays in successful interceptive trials. The performance was computed by using the tau-coupling model for information-movement guidance. Our findings revealed that while the auditory contribution to movement guidance did change across conditions, the visual contribution remained constant. In addition, when comparing the auditory and visual contributions, the results revealed a significant decrease in the auditory compared to the visual contribution in just one of the asynchronous conditions where the visual target was presented after the sound. This may be because more attention was drawn to the visual information, resulting in a decrease in the auditory guidance of movement. To summarize, our findings reveal how tau-coupling can be used to disentangle the relative contributions of the visual and auditory sensory modalities in movement planning.