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.目前尚不明确多感官技能（multisensory skills）的发展路径，以及视觉经验如何影响多感官空间发展。现有研究结论存在分歧：在视听空间平分任务（audio-visual spatial bisection task）中，视觉校准（visual calibration）先于多感官整合（multisensory integration）发生（Gori等人，2012a、2012b）；而在空间定位（spatial localization）等其他任务中，视觉校准则出现于多感官发展之后（Rohlf等人，2020）。 对失明个体的研究能够揭示视觉在感知发展中的作用。已有科学证据表明，失明个体在听觉空间平分任务中存在感知缺损（Gori等人，2014），但在定位听觉声源（auditory sources）方面并无障碍（Lessard等人，1998）。上述结果提示感官校准与感知缺损存在关联。 本研究针对5岁至成年的视力正常个体，探究垂直平面内的视听多感官定位发展情况，以验证该假说。我们提出假设：典型发育儿童在垂直平面中会表现出较晚的多感官整合，且该过程以视觉优势（visual dominance）为先导。 研究测量了单模态（unimodal）与双模态（bimodal）视听阈值（audio-visual thresholds）以及点主观相等点（Point of Subjective Equality, PSEs），并将结果与贝叶斯最优整合模型（Bayesian optimal-integration model，即最大似然估计（maximum likelihood estimation））进行对比。 结果显示，5岁儿童尚未出现垂直平面的多感官整合，提示垂直平面视听定位存在视觉优势。该结果支持以下观点：垂直维度的多感官感知依赖于感官校准。 本研究对上述科学结果展开讨论，提出跨感官校准过程具有任务特异性，并强调将感知缺损与发展过程相结合的重要性，以期更清晰地阐明大脑的运作机制。 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以下信息：年龄（age）、年龄分组（age_bin）、实验条件（condition）以及差别阈限（just noticeable difference, jnd）。