Bruns Patrick, Röder Brigitte
Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Exp Psychol. 2010;57(4):267-74. doi: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000032.
It is well known that spatial discrepancies between synchronized auditory and visual events can lead to mislocalizations of the auditory stimulus toward the visual stimulus, the so-called ventriloquism effect. Recently, a similar effect of touch on audition has been reported. This study investigated whether this audio-tactile ventriloquism effect depends on hand posture. Participants reported the perceived location of brief auditory stimuli that were presented from left, right, and center locations, either alone or with concurrent tactile stimuli to the fingertips situated at the left and right sides of the speaker array. Compared to unimodal presentations, auditory localization was biased toward the side of the concurrent tactile stimulus in the bimodal trials. This effect was reduced but still significant when participants adopted a crossed-hands posture. In this condition a partial (incomplete) localization bias was observed only for large audio-tactile spatial discrepancies. However, localization was still shifted toward the external location of the tactile stimulus, and not toward the side of the anatomical hand that was stimulated. These results substantiate recent evidence for the existence of an audio-tactile ventriloquism effect and extend these findings by demonstrating that this illusion operates predominantly in an external coordinate system.
众所周知，同步的听觉和视觉事件之间的空间差异会导致听觉刺激朝着视觉刺激的方向产生定位错误，即所谓的腹语效应。最近，有报道称触觉对听觉也有类似的影响。本研究调查了这种听觉 - 触觉腹语效应是否取决于手部姿势。参与者报告了短暂听觉刺激的感知位置，这些刺激分别从左、右和中央位置呈现，要么单独呈现，要么同时对位于扬声器阵列两侧指尖施加触觉刺激。与单模态呈现相比，在双模态试验中，听觉定位偏向于同时施加触觉刺激的一侧。当参与者采用双手交叉姿势时，这种效应有所减弱，但仍然显著。在这种情况下，仅在较大的听觉 - 触觉空间差异时才观察到部分（不完全）定位偏差。然而，定位仍然朝着触觉刺激的外部位置移动，而不是朝着受到刺激的解剖学手部的一侧移动。这些结果证实了最近关于存在听觉 - 触觉腹语效应的证据，并通过证明这种错觉主要在外部坐标系中起作用，扩展了这些发现。
