Dataset for the study Late development of audio-visual integration in the vertical plane

It is not clear how multisensory skills develop and how visual experience impacts on multisensory spatial development. Conflicting results show that visual calibration precedes multisensory integration for the audio-visual spatial bisection task (Gori et al., 2012a, 2012b) while in other tasks such as spatial localization, visual calibration occurs after multisensory development (Rohlf et al., 2020). Results in blind individuals can say something about the role of vision on perceptual development. Scientific evidences show that blind individuals have impairments in bisecting the auditory space (Gori et al., 2014) but not in localizing auditory sources (Lessard et al., 1998). Such results suggest that sensory calibration and impairment are linked. We studied the development of audio-visual multisensory localization in the vertical plane in sighted individuals from 5 years to adulthood to address this hypothesis. We hypothesize that typical children would show late audio-visual integration for the vertical plane, preceded by visual dominance. Unimodal and bimodal audio-visual thresholds and PSEs were measured and compared with the Bayesian optimal-integration model (maximum likelihood estimation). Results show that the development of multisensory integration in the vertical plane is not evident at 5 years, suggesting visual dominance for vertical audio-visual localization. These results support the idea that multisensory perception in the vertical domain depends on sensory calibration. We discuss these scientific results proposing that the process of cross-sensory calibration is task-specific and highlighting the importance of linking the impairment and development to better determine how our brain works.

Data are in textual tab delimited format. Columns report for each subject: age, age_bin, condition, jnd.

目前尚不清楚多感觉技能的发育轨迹，以及视觉经验如何影响多感觉空间发育。已有研究结论存在冲突：在视听空间平分任务中，视觉校准先于多感觉整合发生（Gori等人，2012a、2012b）；而在空间定位等其他任务中，视觉校准则于多感觉发育之后出现（Rohlf等人，2020）。

对盲人个体的研究结果能够揭示视觉在知觉发育中的作用。已有科学证据表明，盲人个体在听觉空间平分任务中存在感知缺陷（Gori等人，2014），但在听觉声源定位任务中并无障碍（Lessard等人，1998）。此类结果提示感觉校准与感知缺陷存在关联。

为验证这一假说，我们针对5岁至成年的视力正常个体，开展了垂直平面内视听多感觉定位能力的发育研究。我们提出假设：典型发育儿童在垂直平面内会表现出较晚的视听整合现象，且该过程以视觉优势为先导。

本研究测量了单模态与双模态视听条件下的阈值及主观相等点（Point of Subjective Equality, PSE），并将其与贝叶斯最优整合模型（最大似然估计）进行对比。结果显示，5岁儿童尚未出现垂直平面内的多感觉整合，提示垂直平面视听定位过程中存在视觉优势。上述结果支持了垂直领域多感觉知觉依赖于感觉校准的观点。

我们对上述研究结果展开讨论，提出跨感觉校准过程具有任务特异性，并强调将感知缺陷与发育进程相结合的重要性，以期更深入地阐明大脑的工作机制。

数据集采用文本制表符分隔格式存储，各列依次记录每名被试的如下信息：年龄、年龄分组、实验条件、差别阈限（Just Noticeable Difference, JND）。