Influence of visuomotor action on visual-haptic simultaneous perception: A psychophysical study

Perceiving temporal simultaneity of cross-modal (e.g., visuo-haptic) events is very important for coherent perception and high performance in multi-modal interaction (e.g. telepresence) systems. The perception of simultaneity, however, depends on many factors, including stimulus intensity, redundant information and selective attention. In this study, we examined the effects of two factors on perceived simultaneity in a visuo-haptic task scenario: active (self- generated) motor control and additional visual motion feedback. We used a psychophysical method to measure the differences in points of subjective simultaneity (PSSs) and just noticeable differences (JNDs) in visuo-haptic events. The results showed that the PSS decreased significantly under conditions of active motor control with concurrent visual feedback, and the JNDs were narrowed with either active motor control or additional visual motion feedback.