In our daily life, we are exposed to many objects we need to identify. For example, if something flies through the window at dusk, we might wonder if it is a bird, bat or drone . Visual object recognition is rarely based on what our eyes perceive individually, but is influenced by context and our previous experience. Furthermore, a new experimental study shows that what we see can also be changed by the sound we hear at the same time, meaning that sound can change the way we perceive visual cues.
This study published in the journal Psychological Science shows that relevant audio prompts can help us identify objects faster and more accurately, but can also change our visual perception . If we see a bird and hear the sound of birds singing, we can quickly recognize the bird. However, if the existence of a bird is related to the squirrel 's call, we're not sure what we're looking at. So the brain uses audio input to help us decide what exactly we see.
, the lead author of the study from the University of California, San Diego, said: "Your brain spends a lot of energy processing sensory information in the world and gives you a sense of full and seamless perception." "One way it does this is to infer what kind of information should be expected."
In nature, sound is a reliable predictor of the objects that cause them—the barking of dogs and cats. In this way, sound provides independent and informative clues about the visual world. However, when we use these trusted audio cues in the early stages of identifying visual objects, they can lead us to selectively deal with only certain aspects of visual features.
Williams explains that “informed guesses” based on audio input can help us process information faster, but they can also lead us astray when what we hear doesn’t match what we expect to see.
Researchers conducted three experiments to show participants an ambiguous image of an object deformed into other objects. For example, an airplane becomes a bird, and the images presented to the participants may come from anywhere in the process and have both the characteristics of the aircraft and the bird.
In the first experiment, 40 participants were shown a blurry figure, and while they tried to identify the properties of the object, the researchers played sounds related to the image (the sound of birds singing or the hum of the plane), or unrelated sounds (such as a hammer hitting a nail). After contacting the image, participants were asked to recall which stage of the object shape they saw.
To determine the stage they recalled, participants used a sliding ruler that could move in either direction, more towards the identifiable bird or more towards the identifiable plane. The results showed that when participants heard relevant (relatively unrelated) sounds, they selected object deformation faster, and they changed object deformation selection to match the relevant sounds they heard more closely. The results of the study show that the role of the related sound may regulate our visual perception when visual input is unclear.
"When sounds are related to related visual features, these visual features are prioritized and processed faster than when sounds are not related to visual features. So, if you hear birds singing, anything like birds will give priority to visual perception," Williams explains. "We found that this priority was not purely a promotion, and your perception of the visual object was actually more like a bird than you hear the sound of a plane flying overhead."
Researchers wanted to know which stage of audio input affects visual recognition—it was during the visual discrimination phase or when participants made decisions about the identity of the object.The second experiment showed similar blurred images to 105 participants, but the audio stimulus coincided with the object recognition phase (when the image appears on the screen) or the decision phase (when the image is removed, the participant must select his identity).
Once again, when the participants played the sound while watching the object deformation, it was found that the audio input affected the participants’ speed and accuracy, but when they reported the sound they saw was played when the object deformation was being played. The researchers concluded that real-world sounds mainly influence perception processes, not decision-making processes.
In the third and final experiment, the researchers played the sound to 40 participants before the object deformation was displayed on the screen. The purpose of this is to test whether previous audio inputs affect visual perception by affecting people’s expectations and directing them to focus more on certain features of the object. This was also found to have no effect on participants’ object deformation selection.
experts concluded that, in combination, these findings show that sound changes visual perception only when audio and visual input occur simultaneously.
"Our results show that natural auditory information changes the representation of the objects we see. Specifically, we found that the visual features represented by the object turn to features consistent with concurrent auditory stimuli: the same fuzzy objects (e.g., 50% seal and 50% hammer deformation) are more like seals when paired with seal barking," the study authors wrote.
"This process of identifying objects in the world feels effortless and fast, but it's actually a very computational process," Williams said. "To relieve this burden, your brain will evaluate information from other senses."
researchers hope to build on these findings to explore how sound affects our ability to locate objects, how visual input affects our perception of sound and whether audio-visual integration is innate or acquired.
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