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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.02.12.945949

Diversification of perceptual mechanisms underlying preserved multisensory behaviour in healthy aging

Park, H.·Kayser, C.
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Abstract

The manner in which humans exploit multisensory information for subsequent decisions changes with age. Multiple causes for such age-effects are being discussed, including a reduced precision in peripheral sensory representations, changes in cognitive inference about causal relations between sensory cues, and a decline in memory contributing to altered sequential patterns of multisensory behaviour. To dissociate these putative contributions, we investigated how healthy young and older adults integrate audio-visual spatial information within trials (the ventriloquism effect) and between trials (the ventriloquism aftereffect). With both a model-free and (Bayesian) model-based analyses we found that both biases differed between groups. Our results attribute the age-change in the ventriloquism bias to a decline in spatial hearing rather than a change in cognitive processes. This decline in peripheral function, combined with a more prominent influence from preceding responses rather than preceding stimuli in the elderly, can also explain the observed age-effect in the ventriloquism aftereffect. Our results suggest a transition from a sensory- to a behavior-driven influence of past multisensory experience on perceptual decisions with age, due to reduced sensory precision and change in memory capacity.

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Park, H., Kayser, C.. 2020-02-13. Diversification of perceptual mechanisms underlying preserved multisensory behaviour in healthy aging. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.12.945949

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