Zampini Massimiliano, Shore David I, Spence Charles
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK.
Exp Brain Res. 2003 Sep;152(2):198-210. doi: 10.1007/s00221-003-1536-z. Epub 2003 Jul 22.
In two experiments, we examined the extent to which audiovisual temporal order judgments (TOJs) were affected by spatial factors and by the dimension along which TOJs were made. Pairs of auditory and visual stimuli were presented from either the left and/or right of fixation at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), and participants made unspeeded TOJs regarding either "Which modality was presented first?" (experiment 1), or "Which side was presented first?" (experiment 2). Modality TOJs were more accurate (i.e. just-noticeable differences, JNDs, were smaller) when the auditory and visual stimuli were presented from different spatial positions rather than from the same position, highlighting an important potential confound inherent in previous research. By contrast, spatial TOJs were unaffected by whether or not the two stimuli were presented in different modalities. A between-experiments comparison revealed more accurate performance (i.e. smaller JNDs) when people reported which modality came first than when they reported which side came first for identical bimodal stimulus pairs. These results demonstrate that multisensory TOJs are critically dependent on both the relative spatial position from which stimuli are presented and on the particular dimension being judged.
在两项实验中，我们考察了视听时间顺序判断（TOJ）受空间因素以及进行TOJ判断的维度影响的程度。成对的听觉和视觉刺激在不同的刺激起始异步时间（SOA）下从注视点的左侧和/或右侧呈现，参与者对“哪种模态先呈现？”（实验1）或“哪一侧先呈现？”（实验2）进行无时间限制的TOJ判断。当听觉和视觉刺激从不同空间位置而非相同位置呈现时，模态TOJ更准确（即，刚可察觉差异，JND，更小），这突出了先前研究中固有的一个重要潜在混淆因素。相比之下，空间TOJ不受两种刺激是否以不同模态呈现的影响。实验间比较显示，对于相同的双峰刺激对，当人们报告哪种模态先出现时比报告哪一侧先出现时表现更准确（即JND更小）。这些结果表明，多感官TOJ严重依赖于刺激呈现的相对空间位置以及所判断的特定维度。
