Alan O' Dowd, Francesca Sorgini & Fiona N Newell

Evidence from the crossmodal congruency task (CCT), which involves speeded spatial tactile discrimination whilst viewing spatially compatible/incompatible visual distractors in anatomical and non-anatomical contexts, suggests that perceiving bodies augments the crossmodal congruency effect (CCE), a unique index of visuotactile integration. However, the CCE may represent spatial response conflict. To address this, we investigated visuotactile integration in young adults using temporally defined tactile and visual events and found equable CCEs in response to hands and non-anatomical stimuli. Enhanced tactile discrimination and lower rates of multisensory fusion, but not fission, manifested when viewing hands. Signal detection analysis confirmed that visuotactile fusion was driven by perceptual changes whereas fission was a combination of perceptual changes and response bias. The data suggest that the perception of bodies can influence tactile perception and specific patterns of multisensory integration, shedding light on the systematic influence of perceptual context and stimulus corporeality on visuotactile dynamics.