The Development of Audio‐Tactile Spatial Integration: Unraveling Vision's Contribution

TL;DR

The study explores how vision influences the development of spatial perception using sound and touch, finding that sighted children reach optimal integration later than blind children.

Contribution

The paper reveals that optimal audio-tactile integration develops late in sighted children and that visual experience shapes sensory development differently.

Findings

Sighted children achieve optimal audio-tactile integration only after age 12.

Blind children show higher unimodal sensory precision from a younger age.

Tactile precision stabilizes earlier than auditory in sighted children, but the opposite is true for blind children.

Abstract

Vision is considered the dominant sense for spatial perception. Yet, how vision contributes to its refinement in other modalities remains unclear. Consequently, we investigated the development of audio‐tactile spatial integration using a localization task in which participants had to determine the position of auditory, tactile, and audio‐tactile stimuli and the influence of visual experience in this process. We tested sighted and blind children at different ages. We found that in sighted children, tactile spatial perception stabilizes earlier than the auditory one, and optimal audio‐tactile integration is achieved only after 12 years‐of‐age. Conversely, blind children showed higher uni‐sensory precisions from a younger age, although multisensory performance exhibited minimal improvement through age. Overall, our findings suggest that optimal audio‐tactile spatial integration develops late during childhood and that vision might play a pivotal role in this process, that is, the absence of vision prompts earlier development of other sensory modalities when processing bodily stimuli.

Sighted children achieve optimal audio‐tactile spatial integration only after 12 years, aligning bimodal precision with MLE predictions in adolescence.Blind children show superior early uni‐modal sensory localization precision compared to sighted peers.Tactile precision stabilizes earlier than auditory in sighted children, whereas blind children show the opposite developmental trajectory for localization.

Sighted children achieve optimal audio‐tactile spatial integration only after 12 years, aligning bimodal precision with MLE predictions in adolescence.

Blind children show superior early uni‐modal sensory localization precision compared to sighted peers.

Tactile precision stabilizes earlier than auditory in sighted children, whereas blind children show the opposite developmental trajectory for localization.

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