Abstract Vision and touch interact in spatial perception. How vision exerts online influences on tactile spatial perception is well-appreciated, but far less is known regarding how recent visual experiences modulate tactile perception offline, particularly in a bimanual context. Here, we investigated how visual cues exert both online and offline biases in bimanual tactile spatial perception. In a series of experiments, participants performed a 4-alternative forced-choice tactile detection task in which they reported the perception of peri-threshold taps on the left hand, right hand, both hands, or no touch (LRBN). Participants initially performed the LRBN task in the absence of visual cues. Subsequently, participants performed the LRBN task in blocks comprising non-informative visual cues that were presented on the left and right hands. To explore the effect of distractor salience on the visuo-tactile spatial interactions, we varied the brightness of the visual cues such that visual stimuli associated with one hand were consistently brighter than visual stimuli associated with the other hand. We found that participants performed the tactile detection task in an unbiased manner prior to experiencing visual distractors. Concurrent visual cues biased tactile performance, despite an instruction to ignore vision, and these online effects tended to be larger with brighter distractors. Moreover, tactile performance was biased toward the side of the brighter visual cues even on trials when no visual cues were presented during the visuo-tactile block. Using a modeling framework based on signal detection theory, we compared a number of alternative models to recapitulate the behavioral results and to link the visual influences on touch to sensitivity and criterion reductions. Our collective results imply that recent visual experiences alter the sensitivity of tactile signal detection processes while concurrent visual cues induce more liberal perceptual decisions in the context of bimanual touch.

中文翻译：

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视觉自动对双手触觉空间感知施加在线和离线影响

摘要 视觉和触觉在空间感知中相互作用。视觉如何对触觉空间感知施加在线影响是众所周知的，但关于最近的视觉体验如何离线调节触觉感知，尤其是在双手环境中，人们知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了视觉线索如何在双手触觉空间感知中施加在线和离线偏差。在一系列实验中，参与者执行了 4 种可选的强制选择触觉检测任务，在该任务中，他们报告了对左手、右手、双手或无触摸 (LRBN) 边缘阈值轻敲的感知。参与者最初在没有视觉线索的情况下执行 LRBN 任务。随后，参与者在包含呈现在左手和右手上的非信息性视觉线索的块中执行 LRBN 任务。为了探索干扰物显着性对视觉触觉空间交互的影响，我们改变了视觉线索的亮度，使得与一只手相关的视觉刺激始终比与另一只手相关的视觉刺激更亮。我们发现参与者在经历视觉干扰之前以无偏见的方式执行触觉检测任务。尽管有忽略视觉的指示，但同时存在的视觉线索偏向于触觉表现，并且这些在线效果往往会随着更亮的干扰物而变大。此外，即使在视觉触觉块期间没有呈现视觉线索的试验中，触觉表现也偏向于更亮的视觉线索一侧。使用基于信号检测理论的建模框架，我们比较了许多替代模型来概括行为结果并将视觉对触觉的影响与灵敏度和标准减少联系起来。我们的集体结果表明，最近的视觉体验改变了触觉信号检测过程的敏感性，而并发的视觉线索在双手触摸的背景下会引起更自由的感知决策。