99
was no cost associated with sounds delivered to the side opposite the cutaneous
stimulus. These results indicate that when an auditory stimulus was delivered to the
same side as the somatosensory stimulus, there was a significant enhancement for
spatially discriminating the side of the somatosensory stimulus with this simultaneous
irrelevant sound.
Figure 2. The data from Experiment 2 examining the spatial specificity of auditory influences on
touch perception. The left half of the figure shows the hit rates, whereas the right half of the figure
illustrates the false alarm rates. Error bars reflect ±1 standard error of the mean.
Since subjects reported on each trial whether they felt something on the left,
right, or on neither side, false alarms occurred when participants reported feeling
something that was not actually presented (i.e., erroneous reports of a somatosensory
percept on one hand when no somatosensory stimulus was delivered or when it was