Apparent causality shifts the perceived temporal order of audio-visual events

What is it about?

When two events are apparently linked by cause-effect relation (i.e., a sound generated by the collision between two objects), the brain automatically recalibrates the perceived temporal order of the two events, with the auditory signal being perceptually delayed compared to the visual signal. This appears to be consistent with the laws of physics, which predict that due to the different speed of sound and light, an auditory signal must always come after the visual event that appears to have generated the sound. The idea is thus that the brain applies such rule to recalibrate multisensory signals, resulting in a sound to be perceived after a visual event even if it was actually presented before.

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Why is it important?

Our results show that apparent causality between two events represents a strong prior to interpret their temporal order. Apparent causality is thus systematically used by the brain to construct perception in line with the laws of physics which we are constantly exposed to.