The Impact of Spatial Incongruence on an Auditory-Visual Illusion

Hamish Innes-Brown · David P. Crewther

59 citations0/0 files storedPLoS ONE

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Multisensory perception and integration Visual perception and processing mechanisms Neuroscience and Music Perception

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The sound-induced flash illusion is an auditory-visual illusion--when a single flash is presented along with two or more beeps, observers report seeing two or more flashes. Previous research has shown that the illusion gradually disappears as the temporal delay between auditory and visual stimuli increases, suggesting that the illusion is consistent with existing temporal rules of neural activation in the superior colliculus to multisensory stimuli. However little is known about the effect of spatial incongruence, and whether the illusion follows the corresponding spatial rule. If the illusion occurs less strongly when auditory and visual stimuli are separated, then integrative processes supporting the illusion must be strongly dependant on spatial congruence. In this case, the illusion would be consistent with both the spatial and temporal rules describing response properties of multisensory neurons in the superior colliculus. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The main aim of this study was to investigate the importance of spatial congruence in the flash-beep illusion. Selected combinations of one to four short flashes and zero to four short 3.5 KHz tones were presented. Observers were asked to count the number of flashes they saw. After replication of the basic illusion using centrally-presented stimuli, the auditory and visual components of the illusion stimuli were presented either both 10 degrees to the left or right of fixation (spatially congruent) or on opposite (spatially incongruent) sides, for a total separation of 20 degrees. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The sound-induced flash fission illusion was successfully replicated. However, when the sources of the auditory and visual stimuli were spatially separated, perception of the illusion was unaffected, suggesting that the "spatial rule" does not extend to describing behavioural responses in this illusion. We also find no evidence for an associated "fusion" illusion reportedly occurring when multiple flashes are accompanied by a single beep.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 59 citations exist upstream.

References

1976Hearing lips and seeing voices 1994The merging of the senses 2006Is neocortex essentially multisensory?2000What you see is what you hear 1980Immediate perceptual response to intersensory discrepancy.2001Crossmodal Processing in the Human Brain: Insights from Functional Neuroimaging Studies 2008Multisensory Interplay Reveals Crossmodal Influences on ‘Sensory-Specific’ Brain Regions, Neural Responses, and Judgments 2002Anatomical Evidence of Multimodal Integration in Primate Striate Cortex

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.