Abstract:  The temporal binding window (TBW) is a period of time where two stimuli presented at different times are perceived as one event. This is a way to measure how the brain integrates different stimuli, and to see if individuals can distinguish the temporal delay between a pair of stimuli. The use of visual and auditory stimuli has been used more in prior multisensory integration studies, and the results from these studies have been used to compare individuals with typical sensory and cognitive functions with individuals who have impairments in these domains. These conclusions are built on differences that aren’t supportable without some reliability measurements. Therefore, we aim to measure the consistency of temporal binding windows across different visits using audio-visual stimuli. Temporal binding window measures were collected in 10 participants (ages 19 – 58) with normal hearing and no history of vestibular disease. Each participant was tested twice at separate visits (at baseline, and on average 7 days later) using a fixed psychophysical procedure that consisted of subjective responses of either “flash” or “beep” in each trial. Preliminary results using both Generalized Linear Model (GLM) and Bayesian parameters suggest that there may not be consistency across visits at the group level when using linear regression analysis. Further research and analysis will include a larger sample size to account for variance, Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) data analysis to see if subjective sleepiness can influence performance, and perhaps increasing the number of trials per time interval. Overall, more work is needed to investigate the reliability of audio-visual behavioral data.

This year’s SHRP schedule is available here: https://purdue.edu/TPAN/hearing/shrp_schedule

Titles and abstracts of all SHRP talks are here: https://purdue.edu/TPAN/hearing/shrp_abstracts