The Role of Awareness on Motor-Sensory Temporal Recalibration.

Mikaela Bubna,Erin K Cressman,Melanie Y Lam

doi:10.3389/fnint.2022.747544

Abstract

Temporal recalibration (TR) may arise to realign asynchronous stimuli after exposure to a short, constant delay between voluntary movement and sensory stimulus. The objective of this study was to determine if awareness of the temporal lag between a motor response (i.e., a keypress) and a sensory event (i.e., a visual flash) is necessary for TR to occur. We further investigated whether manipulating the required motor and perceptual judgment tasks modified the influence of awareness on TR. Participants (n = 48) were randomly divided between two groups (Group 1: Aware and Group 2: Unaware). The Aware group was told of the temporal lag between their keypress and visual flash at the beginning of the experiment, whereas the Unaware group was not. All participants completed eight blocks of trials, in which the motor task (single or repetitive tap), perceptual judgment task (judging the temporal order of the keypress in relation to the visual flash or judging whether the two stimuli were simultaneous or not), and fixed temporal lag between keypress and visual flash (0 or 100 ms) varied. TR was determined by comparing judgments between corresponding blocks of trials in which the temporal lag was 0 or 100 ms. Results revealed that both the Aware and Unaware groups demonstrated a similar magnitude of TR across all motor and perceptual judgment tasks, such that the magnitude of TR did not vary between Aware and Unaware participants. These results suggest that awareness of a temporal lag does not influence the magnitude of TR achieved and that motor and perceptual judgment task demands do not modulate the influence of awareness on TR.

Highlights

In many everyday experiences, we perceive sensory events as arising as a consequence of our movements
Given that our results did not vary regardless of inclusion/exclusion of these participants, the results reported below are based on data from all 48 participants, including those deemed to be musically sophisticated or identified as video game players
The current study looked to establish whether awareness of a temporal lag between one’s keypress and visual flash is necessary for temporal recalibration (TR)

Summary

Introduction

We perceive sensory events as arising as a consequence of our movements. The temporal relationship between our action (i.e., pressing a key) and resulting sensory feedback (i.e., a character appearing on the screen) allows us to form a coherent representation of the temporal order of events in the world. If participants complete several keypresses, after which there is a constant temporal lag between their keypress and a flash appearing on the screen, they begin to associate the lagged sensory feedback (i.e., the flash appearing on the screen) as arising due to their action (i.e., the keypress) (Vroomen et al, 2004; Stetson et al, 2006; Sugano et al, 2010; Stekelenburg et al, 2011; Timm et al, 2014; Machulla et al, 2016). It is assumed that this temporal recalibration (TR) arises to minimise temporal discrepancies between one’s actions and sensory stimuli, enabling one to still infer causality (Stetson et al, 2006)

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Discussion

Conclusion