Touch-induced visual illusion.

Abstract

Although vision is considered the dominant modality, recent studies demonstrate the influence of other modalities on visual perception. For example, in the sound-induced flash illusion, two auditory stimuli cause one visual flash to be perceived as two. We report an extension of the sound-induced flash illusion to the tactile-visual domain, yielding the touch-induced flash illusion. Observers reported seeing two flashes on the majority of trials when a single flash was presented concurrently with two task-irrelevant brief tactile stimuli. Somatosensory stimulation changed the sensitivity (d') of detecting visual stimuli, which suggests that the observed effect is at least partly due to perceptual interactions. Together with other recent findings, these results challenge the notion that the processing of visual information is independent of activity in other modalities.