Department of Experimental and Biological Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Gutenbergstr. 18, 35032, Marburg, Germany.
Exp Brain Res. 2010 Apr;201(4):853-62. doi: 10.1007/s00221-009-2099-4. Epub 2009 Dec 2.
Many studies demonstrated a higher accuracy in perception and action when using more than one sense. The maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) model offers a recent approach on how perceptual information is integrated across different sensory modalities suggesting statistically optimal integration. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how visual and proprioceptive movement information is integrated for the perception of trajectory geometry. To test this, participants sat in front of an apparatus that moved a handle along a horizontal plane. Participants had to decide whether two consecutive trajectories formed an acute or an obtuse movement path. Judgments had to be based on information from a single modality alone, i.e., vision or proprioception, or on the combined information of both modalities. We estimated both the bias and variance for each single modality condition and predicted these parameters for the bimodal condition using the MLE model. Consistent with previous findings, variability decreased for perceptual judgments about trajectory geometry based on combined visual-proprioceptive information. Furthermore, the observed bimodal data corresponded well to the predicted parameters. Our results suggest that visual and proprioceptive movement information for the perception of trajectory geometry is integrated in a statistically optimal manner.
许多研究表明，在使用多种感官时，感知和动作的准确性更高。最大似然估计（MLE）模型提供了一种关于如何在不同感觉模式下整合感知信息的新方法，表明了统计上最优的整合。本研究的目的是调查视觉和本体感觉运动信息如何整合以感知轨迹几何。为了测试这一点，参与者坐在一个装置前，该装置可以沿着水平面移动手柄。参与者必须判断两个连续的轨迹是否形成锐角或钝角运动路径。判断必须仅基于单一感觉模式的信息，即视觉或本体感觉，或基于两种模式的组合信息。我们分别估计了每个单一模式条件的偏差和方差，并使用 MLE 模型预测了双模态条件的这些参数。与之前的发现一致，基于视觉-本体感觉组合信息的轨迹几何感知判断的可变性降低。此外，观察到的双模态数据与预测参数非常吻合。我们的结果表明，用于感知轨迹几何的视觉和本体感觉运动信息以统计上最优的方式进行整合。
