Audiotactile interactions in the perception of duration

The following thesis project investigated the interactions between audition and touch in the perception of temporal duration. As will be seen throughout the thesis, different variables were explored to further understand these modalities interactions. Chapter 1 provides a review of the state of the art of multisensory integration, with an emphasis on studies addressing audiotactile interactions in perception. Chapter 2 offers an initial experimental exploration of the interactions between audition and touch, in a duration discrimination paradigm. The next chapters are dedicated to explore how different variables that have shown to play a key role in multisensory integration, affect audiotactile interactions in the perception of duration. For example, Chapter 3 describes a study that explored whether the intensities of the modalities of audition and touch affect their interaction in the perception of duration, allowing a further understanding of this particular modality interaction. Chapter 4 illustrates a study of how the spatial location of auditory and tactile stimuli affects their interaction in the same duration perception task employed in previous chapters. Chapter 5 presents an empirical demonstration that emerged from an interest to investigate how different spatial frames of reference affect tactile duration discrimination. Chapter 6 provides a description of an experiment that tested how the senses of audition, vision and touch interact with one another in the perception of duration, in an interest to find out the hierarchies between these senses when perceiving duration. A further question relating the nature or extent of the modulation of the auditory modality over the perception of tactile duration was addressed in Chapter 7. In this chapter, a description of an experiment testing possible elongation effects of the auditory modality over the tactile one in duration perception is provided. Chapter 8 offers a general discussion of the main findings described along the following thesis project.