Representational momentum in vision and touch: Visual motion information biases tactile spatial localization

Simon Merz,Christian Frings,Charles Spence,Hauke S Meyerhoff

doi:10.3758/s13414-020-01989-1

Abstract

After an object disappears, the vanishing point is shifted in the direction of motion, a phenomenon known as representational momentum. The present study focused on the relationship between motion information and spatial location in a crossmodal setting. In two visuotactile experiments, we studied how motion information in one sensory modality affects the perceived final location of a motion signal (congruent vs. incongruent left-right motion direction) in another modality. The results revealed a unidirectional crossmodal influence of motion information on spatial localization performance. While visual motion information influenced the perceived final location of the tactile stimulus, tactile motion information had no influence on visual localization. These results therefore extend the existing literature on crossmodal influences on spatial location and are discussed in relation to current theories of multisensory perception.

Highlights

One of the most important questions in human perception research is to determine which information is used to inform perception, given that we live in a dynamic, multisensory world (e.g., Calvert, Spence, & Stein, 2004)
Visual motion information biased the localization of the tactile stimulus, but not vice versa, as shown by the 2 × 2 × 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA)
Localization errors differed as a function of the modalities, F(1, 21) = 57.18, p < .001, ɳp2 = .731, with a positive displacement being evidenced for the visual modality (5.9 mm), t(21) = 10.18, p < .001, d = 2.17, and a negative displacement for the tactile modality (– 6.7 mm), t(21) = – 5.07, p < .001, d = 1.08

Summary

Introduction

One of the most important questions in human perception research is to determine which information is used to inform perception, given that we live in a dynamic, multisensory world (e.g., Calvert, Spence, & Stein, 2004). In order to understand how we perceive and process the stimulation from different senses, researchers have identified and investigated systematic perceptual biases and effects in different sensory modalities One of these systematic biases is the so-called forward displacement, that is, a dynamic visual object will be systematically misperceived further along its anticipated trajectory than its actual final location (representational momentum, Freyd & Finke, 1984; see Hubbard, 2005, 2018, for reviews). This bias, in which the direction of a dynamic stimulus influences its perceived spatial location, has been evidenced in vision. While it is often argued that spatial co-location is a crucial factor facilitating multisensory integration, it turns out that this is typically only true when the participant’s task is, in some sense, spatial (see Spence, 2013, for a review)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion