Exaggerated groups: amplification in ensemble coding of temporal and spatial features.

The human visual system represents summary statistical information (e.g. average) along many visual dimensions efficiently.

Cross-Modal Correspondence Among Vision, Audition, and Touch in Natural Objects: An Investigation of the Perceptual Properties of Wood.

Certain systematic relationships are often assumed between information conveyed from multiple sensory modalities; for instance, a small figure and a high pitch may be perceived as more harmonious. This phenomenon, termed cross-modal correspondence, may result from correlations between multi-sensory signals learned in daily experience of the natural environment. If so, we would observe cross-modal correspondences not only in the perception of artificial stimuli but also in perception of natural objects.

Effects of Frequency Separation and Diotic/Dichotic Presentations on the Alternation Frequency Limits in Audition Derived from a Temporal Phase Discrimination Task.

Temporal phase discrimination is a useful psychophysical task to evaluate how sensory signals, synchronously detected in parallel, are perceptually bound by human observers. In this task two stimulus sequences synchronously alternate between two states (say, A-B-A-B and X-Y-X-Y) in either of two temporal phases (ie A and B are respectively paired with X and Y, or vice versa). The critical alternation frequency beyond which participants cannot discriminate the temporal phase is measured as an index characterizing the temporal property of the underlying binding process.

Does seeing ice really feel cold? Visual-thermal interaction under an illusory body-ownership.

Although visual information seems to affect thermal perception (e.g. red color is associated with heat), previous studies have failed to demonstrate the interaction between visual and thermal senses.

[Ventriloquism and audio-visual integration of voice and face].

Presenting synchronous auditory and visual stimuli in separate locations creates the illusion that the sound originates from the direction of the visual stimulus. Participants' auditory localization bias, called the ventriloquism effect, has revealed factors affecting the perceptual integration of audio-visual stimuli. However, many studies on audio-visual processes have focused on performance in simplified experimental situations, with a single stimulus in each sensory modality.

Perceptual congruency of audio-visual speech affects ventriloquism with bilateral visual stimuli.

Many studies on multisensory processes have focused on performance in simplified experimental situations, with a single stimulus in each sensory modality. However, these results cannot necessarily be applied to explain our perceptual behavior in natural scenes where various signals exist within one sensory modality. We investigated the role of audio-visual syllable congruency on participants' auditory localization bias or the ventriloquism effect using spoken utterances and two videos of a talking face.