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Auditory dominance over vision in the perception of interval duration

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Abstract

The “ventriloquist effect” refers to the fact that vision usually dominates hearing in spatial localization, and this has been shown to be consistent with optimal integration of visual and auditory signals (Alais and Burr in Curr Biol 14(3):257–262, 2004). For temporal localization, however, auditory stimuli often “capture” visual stimuli, in what has become known as “temporal ventriloquism”. We examined this quantitatively using a bisection task, confirming that sound does tend to dominate the perceived timing of audio-visual stimuli. The dominance was predicted qualitatively by considering the better temporal localization of audition, but the quantitative fit was less than perfect, with more weight being given to audition than predicted from thresholds. As predicted by optimal cue combination, the temporal localization of audio-visual stimuli was better than for either sense alone.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research, EC projects “MEMORY” (FP6-NEST) and “STANIB” (FP7 ERC) and US NIH Research Grant EY-R01-08266 to MSB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Università Degli Studi di Firenze, via S. Nicolò 89, Florence, Italy

    David Burr

  2. School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA, 6009, Australia

    David Burr

  3. Vision Science Program, Department of Psychology, School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Martin S. Banks

  4. Department of Human Physiological Sciences, University of Pisa, Via S. Zeno 31, 56100, Pisa, Italy

    Maria Concetta Morrone

  5. Scientific Institute Stella Maris, Calambrone, 56018, Pisa, Italy

    Maria Concetta Morrone

Authors
  1. David Burr
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  2. Martin S. Banks
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  3. Maria Concetta Morrone
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Correspondence to David Burr.

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Burr, D., Banks, M.S. & Morrone, M.C. Auditory dominance over vision in the perception of interval duration. Exp Brain Res 198, 49–57 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-1933-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-1933-z

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