Recalibration Of Cross-model Time Interval During Saccades

Research on time perception has shown that temporal interval between two visual stimuli(but not auditory)presented near the onset of saccades is grossly compressed to half its true value during saccades.Although the perceived occurrence of visual stimulus can be shifted by auditory stimulus with high temporal resolution during fixation,it's still unknown whether the mentioned-above time compression of perisaccadic visual events would be influenced by auditory stimulus,for example,to reduce the magnitude of time compression caused by saccades.Here we used the temporal interval judgement task described by Morrone et al.(2005),in which subjects were asked to compare time interval between test stimulus and probe stimulus under different stimulus conditions(V,A,CV and CA conditions in Experiment1;V,CV,AVVA and VAAV conditions in Experiment 2),to observe the potential effect of sound shown on time perception of perisaccadic visual stimulus.Results showed that auditory time perception remained precise regardless of stimulus presentation time relative to saccadic onset(Experiment1).But for perisaccadic visual stimulus,the apparent interval between two bars was strongly compressed and the magnitude of time compression for visual events was altered by asynchronous rather than synchronous auditory stimulus during saccades(Experiment 1 and 2).In other words,asynchronous sounds could increase(or decrease)the time compression of perisaccadic visual stimulus by increasing(or decreasing)participants' perceived temporal separation.These results seem to demonstrate that time compression for perisaccadic visual stimulus can be influenced by asynchronous auditory stimulus and the cross-modal integration does improve the precision of time perception of visual stimuli during saccades.