When correlation implies causation in multisensory integration.

By Cesare V. Parise, Charles Spence, Marc O. Ernst. 2012

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Inferring which signals have a common underlying cause, and hence should be integrated, represents a primary challenge for a perceptual system dealing with multiple sensory inputs [1-3]. This challenge is often referred to as the correspondence problem or causal inference. Previous research has demonstrated that spatiotemporal cues, along with prior knowledge, are exploited by the human brain to solve this problem [4-9]. Here we explore the role of correlation between the fine temporal structure of auditory and visual signals in causal inference. Specifically, we investigated whether correlated signals are inferred to originate from the same distal event and hence are integrated optimally [10]. In a localization task with visual, auditory, and combined audiovisual targets, the improvement in precision for combined relative to unimodal targets was statistically optimal only when audiovisual signals were correlated. This result demonstrates that humans use the similarity in the temporal structure of multisensory signals to solve the correspondence problem, hence inferring causation from correlation.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sensory Systems, Social Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

A Neurorobotic Experiment for Crossmodal Conflict Resolution in Complex Environments * (2018, background): “correlation perceived as a form of causation [15].”
EPIC-Fusion: Audio-Visual Temporal Binding for Egocentric Action Recognition (2019, background): “Evidence in neuroscience and behavioural sciences points at the presence of such a TBW in humans [30, 41].”
Eating with our ears: assessing the importance of the sounds of consumption on our perception and enjoyment of multisensory flavour experiences (2015, background): “That said, if you get the timing right [106], the brain has a strong bias toward combining those cues that are perceived to have occurred at the same time, or that appear to be correlated temporally [116], even if those cues have little to do with one another [117].”
Multisensory integration: flexible use of general operations (2014, unknown): “from different modalities about singular objects or events often predict each other; they typically cross-correlate where one sense lags the other (Parise et al., 2012), whereas within-modal-”
Cross-correlation between auditory and visual signals promotes multisensory integration. (2013, background): “While previous research has already demonstrated the benefits as- sociated with the integration of correlated signals (Parise et al., 2012), the results of the present study demonstrate their costs.”
The Brain’s Tendency to Bind Audiovisual Signals Is Stable but Not General (2016, unknown): “As we experience the surrounding world, our brains effortlessly process sights and sounds, inferring which visual sources produced which auditory signals (Parise, Spence, & Ernst, 2012; Shams & Beierholm, 2010; Shams, Ma, & Beierholm, 2005; Stein, 2012).”
Biases in Visual, Auditory, and Audiovisual Perception of Space (2015, result): “Our finding of a central bias in visual localization is consistent with most studies in this area, especially those in which the cursor was visible during response, which thus minimizes motor error [1,6,13,15].”