Temporal Order Judgment Task Research Articles

Gender-specific effects of emotional modulation on visual temporal order thresholds.

Emotions affect temporal information processing in the low-frequency time window of a few seconds, but little is known about their effect in the high-frequency domain of some tens of milliseconds. The present study aims to investigate whether negative and positive emotional states influence the ability to discriminate the temporal order of visual stimuli, and whether gender plays a role in temporal processing. Due to the hemispheric lateralization of emotion, a hemispheric asymmetry between the left and the right visual field might be expected. Using a block design, subjects were primed with neutral, negative and positive emotional pictures before performing temporal order judgment tasks. Results showed that male subjects exhibited similarly reduced order thresholds under negative and positive emotional states, while female subjects demonstrated increased threshold under positive emotional state and reduced threshold under negative emotional state. Besides, emotions influenced female subjects more intensely than male subjects, and no hemispheric lateralization was observed. These observations indicate an influence of emotional states on temporal order processing of visual stimuli, and they suggest a gender difference, which is possibly associated with a different emotional stability.

Is attentional prioritization on a location where pain is expected modality-specific or multisensory?

Previous research suggests that anticipating pain at a particular body location prioritizes somatosensory input at that location. The present study tested whether this prioritization effect is limited to somatosensory information (modality-specific hypothesis) or generalizes to other sensory modalities (multisensory hypothesis). Thirty-four students performed tactile and visual Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ) tasks while either expecting a painful stimulus on one of the hands (threat), or expecting no pain stimulus (control). Participants judged the order of either two visual stimuli (visual condition) or two tactile stimuli (tactile condition), one on each hand. Analyses revealed that only in threat trials, participants became aware of stimuli on the threatened hand more quickly as compared to the neutral hand, replicating the prioritization effect. Of particular interest, this effect was not different between the tactile and visual conditions. This suggests that the anticipation of pain results in multisensory prioritization of information at the threatened body location.

Unconscious Grouping of Chinese Characters: Evidence from Object-based Attention

To show that, in reading, a fundamental and unconscious perceptual process occurs beyond the current fixation, we examined whether peripherally presented characters of Chinese words in such extreme viewing conditions could be grouped when some characters were rendered invisible while others were visible. We presented a pair of two-character Chinese words and indexed whether the visible and invisible characters that formed a word could be grouped together by the effect of same-object advantage- an index used to indicate the formation of perceptual grouping and the basis for attentional selection (i.e. object-based attention). Results revealed a difference in the judgments of prior entry that would otherwise be equivalent between two concurrent targets in a cued temporal-order judgment task: the target that appeared in the cued word was judged to appear first more frequently than the other target that appeared in the uncued word. The results suggest that a perceptual grouping was formed for two-character words between visible and invisible constituent characters. While grouping within two-character words occurred, the invisible characters remained invisible in most of the trials, suggesting that this grouping occurred unconsciously. This implies that, in reading, characters presented in the peripheral region can be grouped into words even without the readers' awareness of all the constituent characters, and such unconscious grouping can facilitate fluent reading by aggregating the texts into fewer meaningful units and thus reduce the number of fixations needed.

Exogenous features versus prior experiences modulate different subregions of the right IPL during episodic memory retrieval.

The fractionation view holds that distinct cognitive operations are mediated by subregions of the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Within IPL, we hypothesised that retrieval-related activity in different parts of the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG) may be modulated differentially by information acquired via different combinations of attention signals at encoding. We had two groups of participants watch a 42-min TV episode and, after a 24-hr delay, perform a temporal-order judgment task during fMRI. Each retrieval trial comprised three images presented sequentially, requiring participants to judge the temporal order between the first and last images while ignoring the second image (“distractor”). We manipulated the bottom-up factor by presenting distractors that were extracted from either an event-boundary or a non-boundary of the movie. The top-down factor was manipulated by instructing one group perform a segmentation task reporting the event-boundaries at encoding, while the other group watched the movie passively. Across groups, we found that the stimulus-related factor modulated retrieval activation in the anterior rSMG (areas PFt and PFop), whereas the goal-related influence of prior segmentation interacted with this effect in the middle rSMG (area PF), demonstrating IPL segregation during retrieval as a function of prior bottom-up vs. top-down attention signals.

Relações entre Adaptabilidade de carreira e personalidade: Um estudo com universitários ingressantes brasileiros

Identificar os fatores que influenciam a experiência universitária dos estudantes é importante para a pesquisa no desenvolvimento de carreira e permite uma maior compreensão da adaptação acadêmica dos alunos. Este estudo investigou as relações entre traços de personalidade e adaptabilidade de carreira em universitários ingressantes brasileiros. 359 alunos participaram (59,3% mulheres), com idade média de 20,6 anos, que responderam a perguntas biodemográficas, uma escala de adaptabilidade de carreira e uma lista de marcadores de personalidade. Foram encontradas correlações significativas entre adaptabilidade e todas as dimensões da personalidade. Não houve diferenças significativas entre os sexos na adaptabilidade e os estudantes de Humanidades tiveram escores significativamente mais baixos em preocupação de carreira do que alunos de outras áreas. Os resultados favorecem a discussão sobre o impacto das características de entrada dos estudantes para a adaptação e o engajamento acadêmico.

Neural correlates of audiovisual temporal processing – Comparison of temporal order and simultaneity judgments

Multisensory integration is one of the essential features of perception. Though the processing of spatial information is an important clue to understand its mechanisms, a complete knowledge cannot be achieved without taking into account the processing of temporal information. Simultaneity judgments (SJs) and temporal order judgments (TOJs) are the two most widely used procedures for explicit estimation of temporal relations between sensory stimuli. Behavioral studies suggest that both tasks recruit different sets of cognitive operations. On the other hand, empirical evidence related to their neuronal underpinnings is still scarce, especially with regard to multisensory stimulation. The aim of the current fMRI study was to explore neural correlates of both tasks using paradigm with audiovisual stimuli. Fifteen subjects performed TOJ and SJ tasks grouped in 18-second blocks. Subjects were asked to estimate onset synchrony or temporal order of onsets of non-semantic auditory and visual stimuli. Common areas of activation elicited by both tasks were found in the bilateral fronto-parietal network, including regions whose activity can be also observed in tasks involving spatial selective attention. This can be regarded as an evidence for the hypothesis that tasks involving selection based on temporal information engage the similar regions as the attentional tasks based on spatial information. The direct contrast between the SJ task and the TOJ task did not reveal any regions showing stronger activity for SJ task than in TOJ task. The reverse contrast revealed a number of left hemisphere regions which were more active during the TOJ task than the SJ task. They were found in the prefrontal cortex, the parietal lobules (superior and inferior) and in the occipito-temporal regions. These results suggest that the TOJ task requires recruitment of additional cognitive operations in comparison to SJ task. They are probably associated with forming representations of stimuli as separate and temporally ordered sensory events.

The time window of multisensory integration: relating reaction times and judgments of temporal order.

Even though visual and auditory information of 1 and the same event often do not arrive at the sensory receptors at the same time, due to different physical transmission times of the modalities, the brain maintains a unitary perception of the event, at least within a certain range of sensory arrival time differences. The properties of this "temporal window of integration" (TWIN), its recalibration due to task requirements, attention, and other variables, have recently been investigated intensively. Up to now, however, there has been no consistent definition of "temporal window" across different paradigms for measuring its width. Here we propose such a definition based on our TWIN model (Colonius & Diederich, 2004). It applies to judgments of temporal order (or simultaneity) as well as to reaction time (RT) paradigms. Reanalyzing data from Mégevand, Molholm, Nayak, & Foxe (2013) by fitting the TWIN model to data from both paradigms, we confirmed the authors' hypothesis that the temporal window in an RT task tends to be wider than in a temporal-order judgment (TOJ) task. This first step toward a unified concept of TWIN should be a valuable tool in guiding investigations of the neural and cognitive bases of this so-far-somewhat elusive concept.

Converging evidence that common timing processes underlie temporal-order and simultaneity judgments: a model-based analysis.

Perception of simultaneity and temporal order is studied with simultaneity judgment (SJ) and temporal-order judgment (TOJ) tasks. In the former, observers report whether presentation of two stimuli was subjectively simultaneous; in the latter, they report which stimulus was subjectively presented first. SJ and TOJ tasks typically give discrepant results, which has prompted the view that performance is mediated by different processes in each task. We looked at these discrepancies from a model that yields psychometric functions whose parameters characterize the timing, decisional, and response processes involved in SJ and TOJ tasks. We analyzed 12 data sets from published studies in which both tasks had been used in within-subjects designs, all of which had reported differences in performance across tasks. Fitting the model jointly to data from both tasks, we tested the hypothesis that common timing processes sustain simultaneity and temporal-order judgments, with differences in performance arising from task-dependent decisional and response processes. The results supported this hypothesis, also showing that model psychometric functions account for aspects of SJ and TOJ data that classical analyses overlook. Implications for research on perception of simultaneity and temporal order are discussed.

Body in mind.

The sense of touch is imperative in cognition, development, and for how we perceive the world and interact with others. The skin envelopes our body and is our largest organ providing us with information about our immediate environment. In addition to this “surface” information, our somatosensory system also processes information regarding body position and internal bodily states. The importance of processing information to our body is unlikely to be disputed, however, relatively little research has focused on the somatosensory system and the body sense as compared to vision and audition. The last two decades have however seen an increased interest in the body sense from a range of different perspectives, using different methodologies which this research topic aimed to reflect. The broad range of unanswered research questions relating to the body is also mirrored by the contributions in this research topic. We are constantly bombarded with tactile information, such as from the clothes on our body, or the chair we sit upon, yet we are able to process only what is relevant to us. Mechanisms of selective attentions help to prioritize, predict and select information relevant to the situation and to guide our behavior. Selectively attending to a location on the body has repeatedly shown to enhance processing of stimuli at attended over unattended location (e.g., Jones and Forster, 2014). In this research topic, Tame et al. (2014) showed that detection of a tactile stimulus is dependent upon concurrent presented stimuli which may act as a detection mask, even though the mask is presented at different fingers or hands. Somatosensory information is not typically presented in isolation but the sense of touch is also integrated with other modalities (for an overview see Calvert et al., 2004). Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Staines et al. (2014) showed how visual information relevant to movements modulates somatosensory processing. In a comprehensive review, Heed and Azanon, 2014) explored the findings of how we localize touch to our body. Touch can be localized both using somatotopic but also external coordinates. That is, where on the skin was the stimulus, or where based on external spatial co-ordinates did the tactile stimulus appear. Their overview focuses on how temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks have been a fruitful paradigm to investigate tactile spatial processing. External and somatotopic maps were also shown, using ERPs, to be affected by where vision is directed (Gherri and Forster, 2014). Observing others being touched as well as the social aspect of touch are important parts of everyday life and this has also recently attracted increased research interest. In particular, in this research topic Gillmeister (2014) introduced a new behavioral paradigm to measure how observing touch on another person's hand influences the perception of one's own touch. Moreover, Farmer et al. (2014) showed how induced changes in body ownership through observation of touch applied to another person's hand of a different skin color can modulate social attitudes. A similar emerging and interesting research area, briefly covered in this research topic, is how we use interoceptive cues and how the sense of self develops (Sel, 2014). Last but not least, a study investigating the touch and weight perception on aesthetic appreciation points to an important role of one's own body perception in aesthetic perception (Yamada et al., 2014). Together, these recent, seemingly divers studies could fall under the term embodied cognition which now encompasses seemingly diverse fields of psychology highlighting the influence of the body in mind on cognition in general. This research topic brings together both research from well-established paradigms and research areas as well as highlighting how the body and the sense of touch is also being explored in new ways. The contributions here show there are a broad range of perspectives and questions to be addressed when processing stimuli to and within our body. The increased interest in the sense of touch over the last decades will hopefully continue as much still remains to be explored.

The absence of cross-modal forward facilitation of the auditory and somatosensory N1 ERP peaks at intervals less than 300 milliseconds reveals a dissociation with simultaneous and temporal order judgement task performance.

Event Abstract Back to Event The absence of cross-modal forward facilitation of the auditory and somatosensory N1 ERP peaks at intervals less than 300 milliseconds reveals a dissociation with simultaneous and temporal order judgement task performance. Kaine Griffith1, Emma Woods1, Justin R. Timora1 and Timothy W. Budd1* 1 University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Australia Multisensory integration (MSI) refers to a neural process whereby sensory information from separate modalities is combined to form a unified multimodal percept. Perceptual studies using the Simultaneity Judgment (SJT) and Temporal Order Judgement (TOJ) tasks indicate that MSI occurs over a brief 300 millisecond interval or temporal window of multisensory integration (TWMI). The aim of the present research was to determine whether forward facilitation of the N1 ERP peak observed for within-modality repetitions of auditory and tactile stimulation at intervals less than 300 milliseconds is also evident for cross-modal repetitions of auditory and tactile stimuli. Further, we examined whether the temporal pattern of cross-modal N1 forward facilitation was consistent with the TWMI as measured by SJT and TOJ performance. To achieve this 43 participants were presented with binaural auditory or bilateral tactile stimuli at random stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) between 50 and 650 ms during a 64 channel EEG recording. The EEG was epoched and sub averaged according to within (AA, TT) and across (TA, AT) modality stimulus sequence (T=tactile, A=auditory) and SOA range (6 x 100 ms SOA ranges between 50 and 650 ms). SJT and TOJ performance was also measured using the same stimuli and SOA ranges as used for the EEG recording. Using a 2(modality) X 2(sequence) x 6(SOA) analysis design the results replicated prior ERP research where both the auditory and somatosensory ERPs showed forward facilitation of the N1 peak at SOAs less than 300 ms. Similarly, SJT and TOJ performance for the same participants showed the expected MSI effects at SOAs below 300 ms. However no cross-modal N1 forward facilitation was obtained for either auditory or somatosensory ERPs. The results are discussed in terms of the potential limitations when interpreting SJT and TOJ performance as a measure of temporal integration of sensory information. Keywords: Temporal Integration, multisensory integration, N1 ERP, Simultaneous Judgement Task, Temporal order judgment Conference: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Psychophysiology Citation: Griffith K, Woods E, Timora JR and Budd TW (2015). The absence of cross-modal forward facilitation of the auditory and somatosensory N1 ERP peaks at intervals less than 300 milliseconds reveals a dissociation with simultaneous and temporal order judgement task performance.. Conference Abstract: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00006 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 07 Nov 2015; Published Online: 30 Nov 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Timothy W Budd, University of Newcastle, School of Psychology, Ourimbah, NSW, 2258, Australia, Bill.Budd@newcastle.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Kaine Griffith Emma Woods Justin R Timora Timothy W Budd Google Kaine Griffith Emma Woods Justin R Timora Timothy W Budd Google Scholar Kaine Griffith Emma Woods Justin R Timora Timothy W Budd PubMed Kaine Griffith Emma Woods Justin R Timora Timothy W Budd Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Role of modality-specific pre-stimulus oscillations in a spatialized temporal order judgment task. A challenge to the 'gating-through-inhibition'� framework?

Role of modality-specific pre-stimulus oscillations in a spatialized temporal order judgment task. A challenge to the 'gating-through-inhibition'� framework?

Movement Induces the Use of External Spatial Coordinates for Tactile Localization in Congenitally Blind Humans.

To localize touch, the brain integrates spatial information coded in anatomically based and external spatial reference frames. Sighted humans, by default, use both reference frames in tactile localization. In contrast, congenitally blind individuals have been reported to rely exclusively on anatomical coordinates, suggesting a crucial role of the visual system for tactile spatial processing. We tested whether the use of external spatial information in touch can, alternatively, be induced by a movement context. Sighted and congenitally blind humans performed a tactile temporal order judgment task that indexes the use of external coordinates for tactile localization, while they executed bimanual arm movements with uncrossed and crossed start and end postures. In the sighted, start posture and planned end posture of the arm movement modulated tactile localization for stimuli presented before and during movement, indicating automatic, external recoding of touch. Contrary to previous findings, tactile localization of congenitally blind participants, too, was affected by external coordinates, though only for stimuli presented before movement start. Furthermore, only the movement's start posture, but not the planned end posture affected blind individuals' tactile performance. Thus, integration of external coordinates in touch is established without vision, though more selectively than when vision has developed normally, and possibly restricted to movement contexts. The lack of modulation by the planned posture in congenitally blind participants suggests that external coordinates in this group are not mediated by motor efference copy. Instead the task-related frequent posture changes, that is, movement consequences rather than planning, appear to have induced their use of external coordinates.

The effect of numerical magnitude on the perceptual processing speed of a digit

In this study, we investigated whether the numerical information of a digit would affect perceptual processing speed for that digit. In Experiment 1, participants performed a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task in which they judged the order of two digits presented briefly to the left or right of the fixation point with a short asynchrony. The point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) was significantly shifted such that large numbers had to be presented before small numbers in order to be perceived as simultaneous, implying that small numbers are perceptually processed faster than large numbers. Given the susceptibility of a TOJ task to response bias, this result might have simply reflected the conceptual association between magnitude (e.g., small) and response selection (e.g., first). To exclude the potential influence of response bias, we adopted a simultaneity judgment (SJ) task in Experiment 2. Most participants in Experiment 2 had participated in Experiment 1. The participants judged whether the two digits were presented simultaneously or successively. The maximal possibility of simultaneous response was obtained when a large digit preceded a small digit by 5 ms, suggesting that small numbers were indeed perceived earlier than large numbers. Our findings indicated that small numbers were processed faster than large ones and that perceptual mechanisms contribute to this temporal advantage. In addition, although the TOJ and SJ task produced a similar processing speed advantage for small numbers, the PSSs of the two tasks were not correlated, which implied that different cognitive mechanisms were involved in the two tasks.

The effect of visual apparent motion on audiovisual simultaneity.

Visual motion information from dynamic environments is important in multisensory temporal perception. However, it is unclear how visual motion information influences the integration of multisensory temporal perceptions. We investigated whether visual apparent motion affects audiovisual temporal perception. Visual apparent motion is a phenomenon in which two flashes presented in sequence in different positions are perceived as continuous motion. Across three experiments, participants performed temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks. Experiment 1 was a TOJ task conducted in order to assess audiovisual simultaneity during perception of apparent motion. The results showed that the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) was shifted toward a sound-lead stimulus, and the just noticeable difference (JND) was reduced compared with a normal TOJ task with a single flash. This indicates that visual apparent motion affects audiovisual simultaneity and improves temporal discrimination in audiovisual processing. Experiment 2 was a TOJ task conducted in order to remove the influence of the amount of flash stimulation from Experiment 1. The PSS and JND during perception of apparent motion were almost identical to those in Experiment 1, but differed from those for successive perception when long temporal intervals were included between two flashes without motion. This showed that the result obtained under the apparent motion condition was unaffected by the amount of flash stimulation. Because apparent motion was produced by a constant interval between two flashes, the results may be accounted for by specific prediction. In Experiment 3, we eliminated the influence of prediction by randomizing the intervals between the two flashes. However, the PSS and JND did not differ from those in Experiment 1. It became clear that the results obtained for the perception of visual apparent motion were not attributable to prediction. Our findings suggest that visual apparent motion changes temporal simultaneity perception and improves temporal discrimination in audiovisual processing.

Color-motion asynchrony assessed along the chromatic axes and with luminance variation.

Color-motion asynchrony was fist reported by Moutoussis and Zeki (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 264, 393-399, 1997), who showed that a motion direction change needs to precede a color change by approximately 80-120 ms in order for humans to perceive change as synchronous when a visual stimulus changes its direction of motion and color rapidly and repetitively. This phenomenon was investigated with stimuli with a single change of color and a single change of motion. The stimulus was varied along the L/(L+M) axis, along the S/(L+M) axis, or in luminance at a constant chromaticity. The psychophysical task was either a correspondence task or a temporal judgment task. The results showed that all three of the variations in color or luminance produced similar color-motion asynchronies, but the correspondence task consistently showed greater asynchrony (80-110 ms) than did the temporal order judgment task (45-70 ms). The results indicated that color-motion asynchrony is processed at cortical areas after cone-specific chromatic signals and luminance signals are integrated.

Sensorimotor adaptation modifies action effects on sensory binding.

Previous studies have shown that performing a motor action toward a target decreases the perceptual asynchrony observed in a temporal order judgment (TOJ) of a change in the target's visual attributes. We examined the temporal limit of this effect and whether this temporal limit can be extended through sensorimotor adaptation. Participants performed a TOJ task related to changes of the position and color of a visual stimulus in a perceptual and a motor task. A fixed change (color or position) occurred 250 or 500ms following an auditory cue (perceptual task) or the end of a manual reaching action (motor task), whereas the variable change (position or color) occurred randomly within a time window of ±200ms locked to the fixed change. The points of subjective simultaneity (PSSs) revealed that performing a voluntary action decreased the temporal asynchrony observed in the perceptual task, but only in the 250-ms delay condition. In Experiment 2, the fixed change occurred 1s after either an auditory cue or the end of a manual reaching action, and the variable change occurred either simultaneously (new sensorimotor contingencies, 60% of trials) or within a time window of ±200ms (40% of trials). The PSSs revealed that temporal asynchrony decreased in the motor task, but only after adaptation to the 1-s delay. Taken together, these data show that voluntary motor action affects the temporal binding of visual attributes for a period of less than 500ms after the end of the action. Sensorimotor adaptation can nevertheless extend this time interval, at least up to 1s.

Set-relevance Determines the Impact of Distractors on Episodic Memory Retrieval

We investigated the interplay between stimulus-driven attention and memory retrieval with a novel interference paradigm that engaged both systems concurrently on each trial. Participants encoded a 45-min movie on Day 1 and, on Day 2, performed a temporal order judgment task during fMRI. Each retrieval trial comprised three images presented sequentially, and the task required participants to judge the temporal order of the first and the last images ("memory probes") while ignoring the second image, which was task irrelevant ("attention distractor"). We manipulated the content relatedness and the temporal proximity between the distractor and the memory probes, as well as the temporal distance between two probes. Behaviorally, short temporal distances between the probes led to reduced retrieval performance. Distractors that at encoding were temporally close to the first probe image reduced these costs, specifically when the distractor was content unrelated to the memory probes. The imaging results associated the distractor probe temporal proximity with activation of the right ventral attention network. By contrast, the precuneus was activated for high-content relatedness between distractors and probes and in trials including a short distance between the two memory probes. The engagement of the right ventral attention network by specific types of distractors suggests a link between stimulus-driven attention control and episodic memory retrieval, whereas the activation pattern of the precuneus implicates this region in memory search within knowledge/content-based hierarchies.

Visual and auditory perception in preschool children at risk for dyslexia.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in perceptive problems of dyslexics. A polemic research issue in this area has been the nature of the perception deficit. Another issue is the causal role of this deficit in dyslexia. Most studies have been carried out in adult and child literates; consequently, the observed deficits may be the result rather than the cause of dyslexia. This study addresses these issues by examining visual and auditory perception in children at risk for dyslexia. We compared children from preschool with and without risk for dyslexia in auditory and visual temporal order judgment tasks and same-different discrimination tasks. Identical visual and auditory, linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli were presented in both tasks. The results revealed that the visual as well as the auditory perception of children at risk for dyslexia is impaired. The comparison between groups in auditory and visual perception shows that the achievement of children at risk was lower than children without risk for dyslexia in the temporal tasks. There were no differences between groups in auditory discrimination tasks. The difficulties of children at risk in visual and auditory perceptive processing affected both linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. Our conclusions are that children at risk for dyslexia show auditory and visual perceptive deficits for linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. The auditory impairment may be explained by temporal processing problems and these problems are more serious for processing language than for processing other auditory stimuli. These visual and auditory perceptive deficits are not the consequence of failing to learn to read, thus, these findings support the theory of temporal processing deficit.

Short-term learning effect in different psychoacoustic measures.

Learning effect has been studied in the literature, but the learning done in short-term training has not been studied. Also, to date, the learning effect of different psychoacoustic measures has not been compared. In the current study, we compared the perceptual learning effect caused by performing four different auditory temporal processing (ATP) tasks in a short-term training design including two training sessions. A total of 74 young, normal-hearing participants each performed one of the following tasks: spectral temporal order judgment (TOJ), dichotic TOJ, gap detection, or duration discrimination. Each task was performed in two consecutive sessions. A learning effect was observed only for the spectral TOJ task. The change from the first to the second session was larger in spectral TOJ (81%) than in dichotic TOJ (2%), gap detection (7%), and duration discrimination (5%). The difference in perceptual learning between spectral TOJ and other ATP tasks suggests that the performance of this task involves other cue(s) in addition to the temporal one.

Improving the efficiency of multisensory integration in older adults: Audio-visual temporal discrimination training reduces susceptibility to the sound-induced flash illusion

From language to motor control, efficient integration of information from different sensory modalities is necessary for maintaining a coherent interaction with the environment. While a number of training studies have focused on training perceptual and cognitive function, only very few are specifically targeted at improving multisensory processing. Discrimination of temporal order or coincidence is a criterion used by the brain to determine whether cross-modal stimuli should be integrated or not. In this study we trained older adults to judge the temporal order of visual and auditory stimuli. We then tested whether the training had an effect in reducing susceptibility to a multisensory illusion, the sound induced flash illusion. Improvement in the temporal order judgement task was associated with a reduction in susceptibility to the illusion, particularly at longer Stimulus Onset Asynchronies, in line with a more efficient multisensory processing profile. The present findings set the ground for more broad training programs aimed at improving older adults׳ cognitive performance in domains in which efficient temporal integration across the senses is required.