Thomas James Philip, Shiffrar Maggie
Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ 07102, USA.
J Vis. 2010 Oct 1;10(12):14. doi: 10.1167/10.12.14.
Observers are remarkably sensitive to point-light displays of human movement. The Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS) and premotor cortex are implicated in the visual perception of point-light human actions and the integration of perceptual signals across modalities. These neurophysiological findings suggest that auditory information might impact visual sensitivity to point-light displays of human actions. Previous research has demonstrated that coincident, action-consistent sounds enhance visual sensitivity to the presence of coherent point-light displays of human movement. Here we ask whether visual detection sensitivity is modulated specifically by the meaningfulness of sounds that are coincident with observed point-light actions. To test this hypothesis, two psychophysical studies were conducted wherein participants detected the presence of coherent point-light walkers in a mask under unimodal or audiovisual conditions. Participants in audiovisual conditions heard either tones or actual footfalls coincident with the seen walkers' footsteps. Detection sensitivity increased when visual displays were paired with veridical auditory cues (footfalls), but not when paired with simple tones. The footfall advantage disappeared when the visual stimuli were inverted. These results suggest that the visual system makes use of auditory cues during the visual analysis of human action when there is a meaningful match between the auditory and visual cues.
观察者对人类运动的点光显示非常敏感。颞上沟（STS）和运动前皮层与点光人类动作的视觉感知以及跨模态感知信号的整合有关。这些神经生理学发现表明，听觉信息可能会影响对人类动作点光显示的视觉敏感性。先前的研究表明，一致的、动作一致的声音会增强对人类运动连贯点光显示存在的视觉敏感性。在这里，我们要问视觉检测敏感性是否特别受到与观察到的点光动作同时出现的声音的意义的调节。为了验证这一假设，我们进行了两项心理物理学研究，其中参与者在单模态或视听条件下检测掩蔽中连贯点光步行者的存在。视听条件下的参与者听到与看到的步行者脚步声一致的音调或实际脚步声。当视觉显示与真实听觉线索（脚步声）配对时，检测敏感性增加，但与简单音调配对时则不然。当视觉刺激倒置时，脚步声优势消失。这些结果表明，当听觉和视觉线索之间存在有意义的匹配时，视觉系统在对人类动作的视觉分析过程中会利用听觉线索。
