Age-Related Effects on Cross-Modal Duration Perception

Reliable duration perception of external events is necessary to coordinate perception with action, precisely discriminate speech, and for other daily functions. Visual duration perception can be heavily influenced by concurrent auditory signals; however, age-related effects on this process have received minimal attention. In the present study, we examined the effect of aging on duration perception by quantifying (1) duration discrimination thresholds, (2) auditory temporal dominance, and (3) visual duration expansion/compression percepts induced by an accompanying auditory stimulus of longer/shorter duration. Duration discrimination thresholds were significantly greater for visual than auditory tasks in both age groups, however there was no effect of age. While the auditory modality retained dominance in duration perception with age, older adults still performed worse than young adults when comparing durations of two target stimuli (e.g., visual) in the presence of distractors from the other modality (e.g., auditory). Finally, both age groups perceived similar visual duration compression, whereas older adults exhibited visual duration expansion over a wider range of auditory durations compared to their younger counterparts. Results are discussed in terms of multisensory integration and possible decision strategies that change with age.