Examining Age-related Enhancement of Multisensory Gain: The Role of Sensory Decline and Inverse Effectiveness

Older adults experience a greater benefit from multisensory integration than their younger counterparts, but it is unclear why. One hypothesis is that age-related sensory decline weakens unisensory stimulus effectiveness, producing a boost in multisensory gain through inverse effectiveness. Many previous studies present stimuli at the same intensity for both younger and older adults (i.e., stimulus-matched), as opposed to accounting for each participant’s unique perceptual ability (i.e., perception-matched). This makes it difficult to discern the source of age-related differences in multisensory gain. Through a combination of stimulus-matched and perception-matched tasks, I found that older adults exhibit enhanced multisensory gain at low levels of detection and speech-perception, and higher levels of processing like semantic processing. Critically, when accounting for individual differences in perception, I found no age-related enhancements. Together, these findings suggest that sensory decline paired with existing mechanisms such as inverse effectiveness function together to enhance multisensory gain among older individuals.

Name thesis:degree_name

M Sc

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Schneeberger, Laura C

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stevenson, Ryan A.

• multisensory integration
• inverse effectiveness
• aging
• hearing
• vision
• speech-in-noise

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/37076

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/37076