Auditory cueing facilitates temporospatial accuracy of sequential movements

Abstract

Effectively executing goal-directed behaviours requires both temporal and spatial accuracy. Previous work has shown that providing auditory cues enhances the timing of upper-limb movements. Interestingly, alternate work has shown beneficial effects of multisensory cueing (i.e., combined audiovisual) on temporospatial motor control. As a result, it is not clear whether adding visual to auditory cues can enhance the temporospatial control of sequential upper-limb movements specifically. The present study utilized a sequential pointing task to investigate the effects of auditory, visual, and audiovisual cueing on temporospatial errors. Eighteen participants performed pointing movements to five targets representing short, intermediate, and large movement amplitudes. Five isochronous auditory, visual, or audiovisual priming cues were provided to specify an equal movement duration for all amplitudes prior to movement onset. Movement time errors were then computed as the difference between actual and predicted movement times specified by the sensory cues, yielding delta movement time errors (ΔMTE). It was hypothesized that auditory-based (i.e., auditory and audiovisual) cueing would yield lower movement time errors compared to visual cueing. The results showed that providing auditory relative to visual priming cues alone reduced ΔMTE particularly for intermediate amplitude movements. The results further highlighted the beneficial impact of unimodal auditory cueing for improving visuomotor control in the absence of significant effects for the multisensory audiovisual condition.

Keywords: Audiovisual; Goal-directed movement; Multisensory; Sequential movements; Spatial; Temporal; Upper-limb.