Vibrotaction enhances perceived auditory volume at a post-perceptual level
Poster Presentation

Kielan Yarrow
Sobell Dept., Institute of Neurology, and Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL

     Abstract ID Number: 123
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 17, 2006
     Presentation date: 06/18/2006 4:00 PM in Hamilton Building, Foyer
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
Vibrotactile stimuli can elicit a compelling impression of having actually heard a tone, even when very little sound energy is being generated. It has previously been shown that subjects judge auditory tones embedded in white noise to be louder when they are accompanied by a vibrotactile stimulus of the same frequency. A first experiment replicated this result at four different levels of auditory stimulation (no tone, threshold tone, 10 dB above threshold and 20 dB above threshold). The presence of a vibrotactile stimulus induced an increase in the perceived volume of auditory tones across this range. In a second experiment, a two-interval forced choice procedure was used to assess the nature of this crossmodal interaction. Subjects were biased when vibrotaction was applied in one interval, but performance was identical when vibrotaction was applied in both intervals compared to when no vibrotactile stimuli were applied. This result demonstrates that vibrotaction can be ignored when judging the presence of an auditory tone. This implies that the interaction between vibrotaction and audition does not occur at an early perceptual level.