Let Us Not Play It by Ear: Auditory Gating and Audiovisual Perception During Rapid Goal-Directed Action

Susceptibility to audiovisual illusions is altered during rapid upper-limb reaching movements. Although, this change in perception appears to be linked to the movement's real-time characteristics, the mechanism for this alteration remains unknown. In this paper, we examined whether this modulation of multisensory perception could be explained by a decrease in auditory perceptual sensitivity. In two protocols, participants were instructed to perform rapid reaches to a visual target and report the number of auditory events (beeps) they perceived. One or 2 brief beeps were presented with either 0, 1, or 2 brief visual flashes at 0, 100, or 200 ms (protocol 1), or 0, 200, or 400 ms (protocol 2) relative to movement onset. The results revealed a significant, stable, decrease in auditory perception when the stimuli were presented during the movement, as compared to after the movement, and no-movement trials. Overall, the findings of this paper suggest that auditory perceptual sensitivity is monotonically reduced as one engages in visually guided goal-directed actions.