Supervisors info:
Αθανάσιος Πρωτόπαπας, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής (Επιβλέπων), Αργυρώ Βατάκη, Ερευνήτρια ΙΓΕΤ, Κωνσταντίνος Μουτούσης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής.
Summary:
In this study, we investigate how crossmodal correspondences affect the “unity
assumption” according to which an observer assumes that two different sensory
signals refer to the same underlying multisensory event. Participants were
exposed to audiovisual pairs of stimuli that they were presented with a range
of different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) using the method of constant
stimuli. The presented audiovisual stimuli consisted of pitch-color,
pitch-shape, and pitch-size pairs and participants were asked to make unspeeded
temporal order judgments (TOJ) regarding witch modality, either the visual or
the auditory, that had been presented first. According to the “unity
assumption”, participants expected to have difficulty in judging the order of
appearance of the stimuli, assuming they referring to the same underlying
multisensory event (i.e., matched condition), while on the contrary,
participants expected to finding it more easy to judge the order of appearance
of the stimuli, assuming that they are not referring to the same underlying
multisensory event (i.e., mismatched condition). Though, results in the
audiovisual stimuli pair pith-size, and pitch-shape did not verify our
hypothesis, as participants did not show any different performance between the
matched and the mismatched condition. Therefore, it would seem fruitful to
assume that our findings regarding the influence of the these specific
crossmodal correspondences pairs we utilized to the “unity assumption” reflect
some combination of both top-down and bottom-up factors influencing
multisensory integration.
Keywords:
Crossmodal, Correspondences, Unity, Assumption