Sensory experience during early sensitive periods shapes cross-modal temporal biases

Abstract

Typical human perception features stable biases such as perceiving visual events as later than synchronous auditory events. The origin of such perceptual biases is unknown. To investigate the role of early sensory experience, we tested whether a congenital, transient loss of pattern vision, caused by bilateral dense cataracts, has sustained effects on audio-visual and tactile-visual temporal biases and resolution. Participants judged the temporal order of successively presented, spatially separated events within and across modalities. Individuals with reversed congenital cataracts showed a bias towards perceiving visual stimuli as occurring earlier than auditory (Expt. 1) and tactile (Expt. 2) stimuli. This finding stood in stark contrast to normally sighted controls and sight-recovery individuals who had developed cataracts later in childhood: both groups exhibited the typical bias of perceiving vision as delayed compared to audition. These findings provide strong evidence that cross-modal temporal biases depend on sensory experience during an early sensitive period.

The size-weight illusion is unimpaired in individuals with a history of congenital visual deprivation

“…Indeed, full or partial recovery of visuo-tactile functions has been reported, depending on the task. While prior studies have shown that in a simultaneity judgement task designed to test a unified multisensory percept, visuo-tactile performance was unimpaired despite a lack of early visual experience 21 , 22 , sight recovery individuals did not show normal visuo-tactile temporal order biases 27 , 58 . Additionally, our findings of a larger SWI when both visual and haptic size information was available than when only a visual size estimate was possible, in both sight recovery and sighted individuals, fit with a multisensory framework for the occurrence of the SWI 36 , 37 .…”

Development of multisensory integration following prolonged early-onset visual deprivation

“…Previous studies demonstrated that a few months of early visual deprivation are sufficient to permanently alter multisensory interactions at both neural and behavioral levels. [41][42][43][44][45][46] However, our data suggest that prolonged early-onset visual deprivation does not destroy the ability to acquire multisensory integration following surgery (cf. Putzar et al 47 ).…”

Causal inference regulates audiovisual spatial recalibration via its influence on audiovisual perception

“…If discrepancies between the senses consistently lead to recalibration, why do these biases persist? Perceptual biases could reflect adjustments for sensory discrepancies during an early sensitive period of development as has recently been shown for cross-modal biases in temporal perception [ 31 ]. After the sensitive period, it might become impossible to fully compensate for newly developing differences between the senses.…”