Abstract
Natural events are often multisensory, requiring the brain to combine information from the same spatial location and timing, across different senses. The importance of temporal coincidence has led to the introduction of the temporal binding window (TBW) construct, defined as the time range within which multisensory inputs are highly likely to be perceptually bound into a single entity. Anomalies in TBWs have been linked to confused perceptual experiences and inaccurate filtering of sensory inputs coming from different environmental sources. Indeed, larger TBWs have been associated with disorders such as schizophrenia and autism and are also correlated to a higher level of subclinical traits of these conditions in the general population. Here, we tested the feasibility of using a web-based version of a classic audio-visual simultaneity judgment (SJ) task with simple flash-beep stimuli in order to measure multisensory temporal acuity and its relationship with schizotypal traits as measured in the general population. Results show that: (i) the response distribution obtained in the web-based SJ task was strongly similar to those reported by studies carried out in controlled laboratory settings, and (ii) lower multisensory temporal acuity was associated with higher schizotypal traits in the “cognitive-perceptual” domains. Our findings reveal the possibility of adequately using a web-based audio-visual SJ task outside a controlled laboratory setting, available to a more diverse and representative pool of participants. These results provide additional evidence for a close relationship between lower multisensory acuity and the expression of schizotypal traits in the general population.
Highlights
Natural events are often multisensory, requiring the brain to combine information from the same spatial location and timing, across different senses
The first Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) done on simultaneity rate with the aim of testing whether performance was influenced by the spatial congruency factor and stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) showed, a significant main effect of SOA (F(3.849, 192.448) = 184.25, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.787); on the contrary, the main effect of spatial congruency (F(1, 50) = 2.22, p = 0.142, η2p = 0.043) and the interaction between spatial congruency and SOA (F(14, 700) = 1.140, p = 0.318, η2p = 0.022) were not significant
Our results confirmed that the response pattern of perceived simultaneity of audiovisual stimuli varies according to the time interval between the two stimuli, with simultaneity reports more common when the SOAs between the auditory and visual stimulus was brief, and a clear decline in perceived simultaneity at longer SOAs
Summary
Natural events are often multisensory, requiring the brain to combine information from the same spatial location and timing, across different senses. Our findings reveal the possibility of adequately using a web-based audio-visual SJ task outside a controlled laboratory setting, available to a more diverse and representative pool of participants These results provide additional evidence for a close relationship between lower multisensory acuity and the expression of schizotypal traits in the general population. Multisensory integration is not limited only to the processing of simple sensory stimuli, but yields beneficial cascade effects in higher-order cognitive and social processes, which translate into an improvement of the functions such as speech p erception[9,10] and complex verbal and non-verbal problem solving, reasoning and t houghts[11] This integrative ability is strongly dependent on the spatiotemporal relationship and on the physical characteristics of stimuli of different sensory o rigin[12,13], factors that act as statistical indices of the possibility that the stimuli are paired together. The TBW is a probabilistic construct, defined by the range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in which stimuli of different sensory modalities are likely to be perceptually paired
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