Article

We live in a multisensory world and one of the challenges the brain is faced with
is deciding what information belongs together. Our ability to make assumptions
about the relatedness of multisensory stimuli is partly based on their temporal
and spatial relationships. Stimuli that are proximal in time and space are likely
to be bound together by the brain and ascribed to a common external event. Using
this framework we can describe multisensory processes in the context of spatial
and temporal filters or windows that compute the probability of the relatedness
of stimuli. Whereas numerous studies have examined the characteristics of these
multisensory filters in adults and discrepancies in window size have been
reported between infants and adults, virtually nothing is known about
multisensory temporal processing in childhood. To examine this, we compared the
ability of 10 and 11 year olds and adults to detect audiovisual temporal
asynchrony. Findings revealed striking and asymmetric age-related differences.
Whereas children were able to identify asynchrony as readily as adults when
visual stimuli preceded auditory cues, significant group differences were
identified at moderately long stimulus onset asynchronies (150-350 ms) where the
auditory stimulus was first. Results suggest that changes in audiovisual temporal
perception extend beyond the first decade of life. In addition to furthering our
understanding of basic multisensory developmental processes, these findings have
implications on disorders (e.g., autism, dyslexia) in which emerging evidence
suggests alterations in multisensory temporal function.
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Langue : ANGLAIS