Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Exp Brain Res. 2020 Apr;238(4):825-832. doi: 10.1007/s00221-019-05720-x. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
The perception of an event is strongly influenced by the context in which it occurs. Here, we examined the effect of a rhythmic context on detection of asynchrony in both the auditory and vibrotactile modalities. Using the method of constant stimuli and a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC), participants were presented with pairs of pure tones played either simultaneously or with various levels of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Target stimuli in both modalities were nested within either: (i) a regularly occurring, predictable rhythm (ii) an irregular, unpredictable rhythm, or (iii) no rhythm at all. Vibrotactile asynchrony detection had higher thresholds and showed greater variability than auditory asynchrony detection in general. Asynchrony detection thresholds for auditory targets but not vibrotactile targets were significantly reduced when the target stimulus was embedded in a regular rhythm as compared to no rhythm. Embedding within an irregular rhythm produced no such improvement. The observed modality asymmetries are interpreted with regard to the superior temporal resolution of the auditory system and specialized brain circuitry supporting auditory-motor coupling.
事件的感知会受到其发生环境的强烈影响。在这里，我们研究了节奏环境对听觉和触觉两种感觉模式下感知失谐的影响。我们使用恒定刺激法和 2AFC 范式，向参与者呈现同时呈现或具有不同刺激起始时滞（SOA）的成对纯音。在这两种感觉模式中，目标刺激嵌套在以下三种情况中：（i）规则发生、可预测的节奏；（ii）不规则、不可预测的节奏；或（iii）根本没有节奏。总的来说，触觉失谐检测的阈值更高，变异性更大，而听觉失谐检测则不然。与无节奏相比，当目标刺激嵌入规则节奏中时，听觉目标的失谐检测阈值显著降低，但触觉目标的失谐检测阈值则没有显著降低。嵌入不规则节奏中不会产生这种改善。我们根据听觉系统的卓越时间分辨率和支持听觉-运动耦合的专门大脑回路来解释观察到的感觉模式不对称性。
