High-intensity sound increases the size of visually perceived objects

Abstract

The effect of audiovisual interactions on size perception has yet to be examined, despite its fundamental importance in daily life. Previous studies have reported that object length can be estimated solely on the basis of the sounds produced when an object is dropped. Moreover, it has been shown that people typically and easily perceive the correspondence between object sizes and sound intensities. It is therefore possible that auditory stimuli may act as cues for object size, thereby altering the visual perception of size. Thus, in the present study we examined the effects of auditory stimuli on the visual perception of size. Specifically, we investigated the effects of the sound intensity of auditory stimuli, the temporal window of audiovisual interactions, and the effects of the retinal eccentricity of visual stimuli. The results indicated that high-intensity auditory stimuli increased visually perceived object size, and that this effect was especially strong in the peripheral visual field. Additional consideration indicated that this effect on the visual perception of size is induced when the cue reliability is relatively higher for the auditory than for the visual stimuli. In addition, we further suggest that the cue reliabilities of visual and auditory stimuli relate to retinal eccentricity and sound intensity, respectively.

The Louder, the Longer: Object Length Perception Is Influenced by Loudness, but Not by Pitch

“…Evidence for this correspondence was, amongst others, found by means of speeded discrimination tasks in the sense of a pitch-speed compatibility effect: when small objects were paired with a high-pitch tone (as compared to low-pitch tones), discrimination was quicker [10,11]. Similar results were found for matching tasks [12] and two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) paradigms [13,14]. The acoustical parameters of main interest in the mentioned studies were pitch and sound pressure level, and we can derive that small objects are associated with high-pitched and quiet sounds while large objects are linked to low-pitched and loud sounds [15].…”

Low-Level Visual Processing Speed Modulates Judgment of Audio-Visual Simultaneity

“…However, a range of subjective synchrony perception between the temporal onset of visual and auditory stimuli is tolerated [8], from À130 ms (sound preceding) to +250 ms (sound following) [9]. Several crossmodal illusions induced by sound (i.e., audio-visual interactions) have temporal windows within this range [e.g., [10][11][12][13][14]. Therefore, subjective synchrony seems to be more important for audio-visual integration than physical synchrony.…”

Contextual control of audiovisual integration in low‐level sensory cortices

“…Stronger integration for peripheral stimuli thus seems more general than only for speeded detection. Other studies also report stronger peripheral MSI for tasks other than speeded detection, such as size judgment [Takeshima and Gyoba, ].…”

“…For example, on the one hand, multisensory integration in low-level sensory cortices may use lateral (cortico-cortical) and feedforward (non-specific thalamic) projections to speed detection and localization of events, including potentially threatening ones coming from the periphery. Support for this idea comes from observations that: (1) lateral projections from auditory to visual cortex target peripheral rather than central representations of the visual field [Falchier et al, 2002[Falchier et al, , 2010, (2) cross-modal influences in humans appear stronger for peripheral than for central stimuli [Bolognini et al, 2010;Shams et al, 2001;Takeshima and Gyoba, 2013;Zhang and Chen, 2006] and have been linked specifically to fast behavioral reaction times (for auditory-tactile stimuli; [Sperdin et al, 2009], (3) compensatory plasticity after sensory loss, putatively facilitated by unmasking of lateral cross-sensory connections [Budinger et al, 2006;Cappe and Barone, 2005;Lee et al, 2007], specifically enhances peripheral functions [Bavelier et al, 2006;Neville and Lawson, 1987;R€ oder et al, 1999]. On the other hand, cross-modal influences in low-level regions representing central visual/ auditory space may result from feedback from higherorder regions to amplify stimulus representations useful when performing more complex tasks such as speech perception and object identification [Amedi et al, 2005;Van Atteveldt et al, 2004.…”