Mislocalization of a Visual Flash in the Direction of Subsequent Auditory Motion

The onset position of a visual moving object is mislocalized in the direction of subsequent motion. Although recent studies have proved that visual and auditory motion processing is closely related to each other, the interaction of motion and position coding in a cross-modal situation was largely unknown. The present study explored whether the position of a visual flash was mislocalized in the direction of subsequent auditory motion. Observers first memorized the position of a probe and then compared this position with the position of a visual flash, which acted as a target; the target temporally lagged the probe by 600 ms. The auditory motion was defined on the basis of the interaural level difference, and lasted for 100 ms. The onset of the target was synchronized with the onset of the auditory motion. As a result, the target location was significantly mislocalized in the direction of subsequent auditory motion. The results indicate that the interaction of motion and position coding occurs beyond the sensory modality