Effect of awareness about sensory conflict to linear motion perception

Abstract

Motion perception is estimated from integrated multi-sensory cues including visual, somatosensory, and vestibular organ's signal. The sensory integration is affected by various factors such as sensory condition, environment and one's consciousness on these factors. There are relatively less number of studies that focus on the effect of consciousness to the sensory integration. In this study, we examined the effect of awareness of sensory conflict to linear motion perception. Ten subjects reported their perceived direction of motion with coherent or reversed vision condition. To examine the consciousness effect, subjects participated with and without being aware of sensory conflict condition. When subjects were not informed that there could be sensory conflict, vision played a dominant role in their motion perception. On the other hand, when subjects were aware of possible fault in visual cues, relative reliance on visual cue compared to the other sensory cues was significantly reduced, especially under sensory conflict condition. This result implies that the relative weight of sensory information for estimating motion perception might be regulated by the consciousness factor. © 2012 by JSME.