Auditory speed processing in sighted and blind individuals

Abstract

Multisensory experience is crucial for developing a coherent perception of the world. In this context, vision and audition are essential tools to scaffold spatial and temporal representations, respectively. Since speed encompasses both space and time, investigating this dimension in blindness allows deepening the relationship between sensory modalities and the two representation domains. In the present study, we hypothesized that visual deprivation influences the use of spatial and temporal cues underlying acoustic speed perception. To this end, ten early blind and ten blindfolded sighted participants performed a speed discrimination task in which spatial, temporal, or both cues were available to infer moving sounds’ velocity. The results indicated that both sighted and early blind participants preferentially relied on temporal cues to determine stimuli speed, by following an assumption that identified as faster those sounds with a shorter duration. However, in some cases, this temporal assumption produces a misperception of the stimulus speed that negatively affected participants’ performance. Interestingly, early blind participants were more influenced by this misleading temporal assumption than sighted controls, resulting in a stronger impairment in the speed discrimination performance. These findings demonstrate that the absence of visual experience in early life increases the auditory system’s preference for the time domain and, consequentially, affects the perception of speed through audition.