• Sensory reliability takes prio...

Treffer: Sensory reliability takes priority over the central tendency effect in temporal and spatial estimation.

Title:
Sensory reliability takes priority over the central tendency effect in temporal and spatial estimation.
Authors:
Tonelli A; School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. alessia.tonelli@iit.it.; UVIP - Unit for Visually Impaired People, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy. alessia.tonelli@iit.it., Phan CK; School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia., Alais D; School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Source:
Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2025 Nov 06; Vol. 15 (1), pp. 38886. Date of Electronic Publication: 2025 Nov 06.
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Language:
English
Journal Info:
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 101563288 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 2045-2322 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 20452322 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Sci Rep Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s):
Original Publication: London : Nature Publishing Group, copyright 2011-
MeSH Terms:
Auditory Perception*/physiology , Visual Perception*/physiology , Space Perception*/physiology , Time Perception*/physiology, Humans ; Male ; Female ; Bayes Theorem ; Adult ; Young Adult ; Acoustic Stimulation
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Grant Information:
101064748 HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Contributed Indexing:
Keywords: Auditory perception; Central tendency; Spatial perception; Time perception; Visual perception
Entry Date(s):
Date Created: 20251106 Date Completed: 20251106 Latest Revision: 20251109
Update Code:
20251109
PubMed Central ID:
PMC12592404
DOI:
10.1038/s41598-025-22651-6
PMID:
41198729
Database:
MEDLINE

Weitere Informationen

Perception is influenced by contextual factors that help resolve sensory uncertainty. A well-known phenomenon, the central tendency effect, describes how perceptual estimates gravitate toward the mean of a distribution of stimuli, particularly when sensory input is unreliable. However, in multisensory contexts, it remains unclear whether this effect follows a generalized priority across modalities or might be influenced by task-relevant sensory dominance. We studied spatial and temporal estimation in the auditory and visual modalities, testing whether perceptual estimates are driven by a supra-modal prior or by modality reliability specific to the task, and applied Bayesian modeling to explain the results. Participants first performed baseline sessions using only one modality and then a third session in which the modalities were interleaved. In the interleaved session, we found that the changes in auditory and visual estimates were not towards a supra-modal (generalized) prior, but estimates related to the dominant modality (vision for space, audition for time) were stable, while estimates of the other sensory modality (audition for space, vision for time) were pulled towards the dominant modality's prior. Bayesian modeling also confirmed that the best-fitting models were those in which priors were modality-specific rather than supra-modal. These results highlight that perceptual estimation favors sensory reliability over a general tendency to regress toward the mean, providing insights into how the brain integrates contextual information across modalities.
(© 2025. The Author(s).)

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.