No effect of spatial congruence on rapid temporal recalibration to audiovisual asynchrony.

Abstract

The brain integrates multisensory information to construct coherent perceptual representations based on spatial and temporal congruence. Intriguingly, multisensory timing perception can be flexibly calibrated. Repeated exposure to audiovisual asynchrony induces shifts in subjective simultaneity (temporal recalibration). Spatial congruence is known to serve as a grouping cue for recalibration when the audiovisual temporal relationship is ambiguous during exposure. A single exposure to audiovisual asynchrony can also trigger temporal recalibration (rapid recalibration). However, it has been suggested that the underlying mechanisms of these temporal recalibrations differ. Here, we examined whether spatial congruence can be a grouping cue for rapid recalibration when audiovisual pairs are not defined by temporal relationships. Participants made a simultaneity judgment for a pair of audiovisual stimuli after adapting three consecutive stimuli once in a "light-sound-light" or "sound-light-sound" order with an equal temporal interval. The spatial positions of the adapting stimuli were manipulated as an audiovisual pair from the same position (e.g., left) and the remaining stimulus from another position (e.g., right). In three experiments, the spatial congruence of the audiovisual adapting stimuli did not show a modulatory effect, while we replicated the rapid recalibration effects. Rather, rapid recalibration occurred according to the temporal order of the first light and sound. Our findings suggest that, in contrast to temporal recalibration with repeated exposure, the perceptual systems underlying rapid recalibration simply combine individual visual and auditory inputs based on the order in which they arrive.