Sun Yawen, Liu Xiaole, Li Biqin, Sava-Segal Clara, Wang Aijun, Zhang Ming
Department of Psychology, Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
Research Center for Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 21;11:216. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00216. eCollection 2020.
The sound-induced flash illusion (SiFI) is a classical auditory-dominated multisensory integration phenomenon in which the observer misperceives the number of visual flashes due to the simultaneous presentation of a different number of auditory beeps. Although the SiFI has been documented to correlate with perceptual sensitivity, to date there is no consensus as to how it corresponds to sensitivity with aging. The present study was based on the SiFI paradigm (Shams et al., 2000), adding repeated auditory stimuli prior to the appearance of audiovisual stimuli to investigate the effects of repetition suppression (RS) on the SiFI with aging. The repeated auditory stimuli consisted of one or two of the same auditory stimuli presented twice in succession, which were then followed by the audiovisual stimuli. By comparing the illusions in old and young adults, we aimed to explore the influence of aging on the RS of auditory stimuli on the SiFI. The results showed that both age groups showed SiFI effects, however, the RS performance of the two age groups had different effects on the fusion and fission illusions. The illusion effect in old adults was weaker than in young adults. Specifically, RS only affected fission illusions in the old adults but both fission and fusion illusions in young adults. Thus, the present study indicated that the decreased perceptual sensitivity based on auditory RS could weaken the SiFI effect in multisensory integration and that old adults are more susceptible to RS, showing that old adults perceived the SiFI effect weakly under auditory RS.
声音诱发闪光错觉（SiFI）是一种典型的以听觉为主导的多感官整合现象，在这种现象中，观察者会由于同时呈现不同数量的听觉哔哔声而错误感知视觉闪光的数量。尽管已有文献记载SiFI与感知敏感性相关，但迄今为止，关于它与衰老过程中敏感性的对应关系尚无定论。本研究基于SiFI范式（Shams等人，2000），在视听刺激出现之前添加重复的听觉刺激，以研究重复抑制（RS）对衰老过程中SiFI的影响。重复的听觉刺激由一两个相同的听觉刺激连续呈现两次组成，随后是视听刺激。通过比较老年人和年轻人的错觉，我们旨在探讨衰老对听觉刺激的RS对SiFI的影响。结果表明，两个年龄组均表现出SiFI效应，然而，两个年龄组的RS表现对融合和裂变错觉有不同影响。老年人的错觉效应比年轻人弱。具体而言，RS仅影响老年人的裂变错觉，而对年轻人的裂变和融合错觉均有影响。因此，本研究表明，基于听觉RS的感知敏感性降低会削弱多感官整合中的SiFI效应，并且老年人更容易受到RS的影响，这表明老年人在听觉RS下对SiFI效应的感知较弱。
