Sex Differences in Perceptions of Asynchronous Audiotactile Cues

Multisensory cueing is increasingly used in technological systems to alert users to critical events. However, relatively little is known how environmental factors and individual differences affect the perception of asynchronous multisensory cues. In the present experiment, participants were required to provide “yes/no” discriminations related to perceived simultaneity on 288 pairings of auditory and tactile cues. Both the auditory and tactile cues were presented for either 200, 500, or 1000 milliseconds and incorporated one of twelve randomly-selected levels of onset asynchrony, ranging from 25 ms to 300 ms, at 25 ms intervals. For the analyses, participants were grouped by their biological sex. The results indicated that perceived onset asynchrony was affected by both the stimulus duration and participant sex. Stimuli that were 200 milliseconds in duration resulted in the lowest temporal tolerance for perceived asynchrony relative to 500 and 1000 millisecond audiotactile cues. Moreover, males were more sensitive to asynchronies than females.