The body posture modifies the visuo-tactile integration

Taku Konishi, Department of Psychology, Kobe University

Abstract
We examined the multisensory integration process of visual, tactile, proprioceptive information. In Experiment 1, participants performed vibrotactile choice reaction time task with the stimulated hand in their own hemispace(arm uncrossed) or their opposite hemispace(arm crossed), while visual distractor was simultaneously presented in the same or different hand. The responses in the crossed condition were slower than those in the uncrossed condition regardless of presented position of the distractors. Especially in the crossed condition visual distractors had stronger cross-modal interference effect on tactile responses than the uncrossed condition. In Experiment 2, we focused on the 'temporal' modulation of the interference effect by varying the SOAs between target and distactor (-150, -100, -50, 50, 100, 150 ms). We found this effect was varied as a function of the SOA, and, interestingly, the SOA at which the effect was most salient was different between the crossed and the uncrossed conditions. Those results suggest the importance of proprioceptive information on the temporal integration process of visual and tactile information.

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