Crossmodal duration perception in aging adults

Abstract

Temporal perception in the elderly population is impaired in unisensory and multisensory contexts. How aging affects one aspect of temporal processing, duration perception, remains unknown. In young adults, the auditory modality has a much higher resolution of duration discrimination over the visual system. The auditory system also has the capability to influence visual duration perception due to the dominance of the auditory modality in temporal discriminability. This influence diminishes with increasing duration difference between the auditory and visual stimuli. This project aimed to examine whether audition dominates vision in duration perception in a similar way in the elderly. Due to wider temporal windows that older adults have for other temporal perceptions, older adults should experience these influence effect over greater duration differences than young adults. The results of this project concluded that age was not a significant factor determining the extent of auditory influences on visual duration perception. The alignment of auditory and visual stimuli was the greatest factor determining influence effects.