When Correlation Implies Causation in Multisensory Integration
When Correlation Implies Causation in Multisensory Integration
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.039
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发表时间：
2012-01-10
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Ernst, Marc O.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Parise, Cesare V.;Spence, Charles;Ernst, Marc O.
推断哪些信号有共同的潜在原因，因此应该整合，是处理多个感官输入的感知系统面临的主要挑战[1-3]。这种挑战通常被称为对应问题或因果推理。先前的研究表明，人类大脑利用时空线索和先验知识来解决这一问题[4-9]。本文探讨了听觉和视觉信号的精细时间结构在因果推理中的相关性。具体来说，我们研究了相关信号是否被推断为来自同一远端事件，从而被最佳地整合。在具有视觉、听觉和组合视听目标的定位任务中，只有当视听信号相关时，组合目标相对于单峰目标的精度提高在统计上是最优的。这一结果表明，人类利用多感官信号在时间结构上的相似性来解决对应问题，从而从相关性中推断因果关系。
Inferring which signals have a common underlying cause, and hence should be integrated, represents a primary challenge for a perceptual system dealing with multiple sensory inputs [1-3]. This challenge is often referred to as the correspondence problem or causal inference. Previous research has demonstrated that spatiotemporal cues, along with prior knowledge, are exploited by the human brain to solve this problem [4-9]. Here we explore the role of correlation between the fine temporal structure of auditory and visual signals in causal inference. Specifically, we investigated whether correlated signals are inferred to originate from the same distal event and hence are integrated optimally [10]. In a localization task with visual, auditory, and combined audiovisual targets, the improvement in precision for combined relative to unimodal targets was statistically optimal only when audiovisual signals were correlated. This result demonstrates that humans use the similarity in the temporal structure of multisensory signals to solve the correspondence problem, hence inferring causation from correlation.