Aging Impairs Audiovisual Facilitation of Object Motion Within Self-Motion

Abstract

The presence of a moving sound has been shown to facilitate the detection of an independently moving visual target embedded among an array of identical moving objects simulating forward self-motion (Calabro et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, 2011). Given that the perception of object motion within self-motion declines with aging, we investigated whether older adults can also benefit from the presence of a congruent dynamic sound when detecting object motion within self-motion. Visual stimuli consisted of nine identical spheres randomly distributed inside a virtual rectangular prism. For 1 s, all the spheres expanded outward simulating forward observer translation at a constant speed. One of the spheres (the target) had independent motion either approaching or moving away from the observer at three different speeds. In the visual condition, stimuli contained no sound. In the audiovisual condition, the visual stimulus was accompanied by a broadband noise sound co-localized with the target, whose loudness increased or decreased congruent with the target’s direction. Participants reported which of the spheres had independent motion. Younger participants showed higher target detection accuracy in the audiovisual compared to the visual condition at the slowest speed level. Older participants showed overall poorer target detection accuracy than the younger participants, but the presence of the sound had no effect on older participants’ target detection accuracy at either speed level. These results indicate that aging may impair cross-modal integration in some contexts. Potential reasons for the absence of auditory facilitation in older adults are discussed.

Ageing and multisensory integration: A review of the evidence, and a computational perspective

“…The researchers report that the presentation of congruent visual signals significantly improved the precision of sound localisation in both the horizontal and vertical planes, and that this improvement was substantially more pronounced in older adults. Similarly, Roudaia et al (2018) showed that the presence of a congruent auditory cue can improve the detection of a moving visual target within an array of distractors. However, in this case older adults were found to benefit less from the added auditory information than the younger controls.…”

Cross-Modal Cue Effects in Motion Processing

“…These studies suggest that cross-modal cues support both auditory and visual motion perception (Cappe et al , 2009; Schmiedchen et al , 2012; Soto-Faraco et al , 2003), and modulate brain activations during motion discrimination tasks (Lewis and Noppeney, 2010; Kayser et al , 2017). Our recent studies also demonstrate that a congruent auditory cue can help identify a moving object in an environment where the observer is in self-motion (Roudaia et al , 2018), which is highly important for navigation and which underlies several critical activities of daily life, such as collision avoidance. However, overall, the evidence regarding auditory influences on visual motion processing is not entirely consistent.…”