Yarrow Kielan, Haggard Patrick, Rothwell John C
Department of Psychology, Social Science Building, City University, Northampton Square, London, UK.
Perception. 2008;37(7):1114-30. doi: 10.1068/p5824.
Vibrotactile stimuli can elicit compelling auditory sensations, even when sound energy levels are minimal and undetectable. It has previously been shown that subjects judge auditory tones embedded in white noise to be louder when they are accompanied by a vibrotactile stimulus of the same frequency. A first experiment replicated this result at four different levels of auditory stimulation (no tone, tone at detection threshold, tone at 5 dB above threshold, and tone at 10 dB above threshold). The presence of a vibrotactile stimulus induced an increase in the perceived loudness of auditory tones at three of the four values in this range. In two further experiments, a 2-interval forced-choice procedure was used to assess the nature of this cross-modal interaction. Subjects were biased when vibrotaction was applied in one interval, but applying vibrotaction in both intervals produced performance comparable to conditions without vibrotactile stimuli. This demonstrates that vibrotaction is sometimes ignored when judging the presence of an auditory tone. Hence the interaction between vibrotaction and audition does not appear to occur at an early perceptual level.
即使声能水平极低且无法检测到，振动触觉刺激也能引发强烈的听觉感受。此前已有研究表明，当嵌入白噪声中的听觉音调伴有相同频率的振动触觉刺激时，受试者会判断这些音调更响亮。第一个实验在四种不同的听觉刺激水平（无音调、检测阈值处的音调、高于阈值5分贝的音调以及高于阈值10分贝的音调）下重复了这一结果。在该范围内的四个值中的三个值处，振动触觉刺激的存在导致了听觉音调感知响度的增加。在另外两个实验中，使用了二间隔强迫选择程序来评估这种跨模态相互作用的性质。当在一个间隔中施加振动触觉时，受试者存在偏差，但在两个间隔中都施加振动触觉时，表现与没有振动触觉刺激的条件相当。这表明在判断听觉音调的存在时，振动触觉有时会被忽略。因此，振动触觉与听觉之间的相互作用似乎并非发生在早期感知层面。
