The role of imagination in how we perceive our world

Can what we imagine change the way we perceive our world in the future?

Seeing an object the same time we hear a sound coming from somewhere else leads to the “ventriloquist illusion” and its aftereffect.

But researchers suggest that the same effect takes place when we imagine the object.

In four studies, the adaptation and test phase featured the same tone and that when the researchers found that the ventriloquism aftereffect emerged – in response to both mental imagery and visual stimuli.

The sensory information we imagine is often processed by the brain the same way as information that stream into us from the outside world.

A continuous seamless and adaptive process of multisensory integration and recalibration is responsible for maintaining the connection and communication between our senses and the brain so that it can produce a coherent experience of our environment.

We may like to think that sights and sounds in the real world are different from those that are imagined but our brain does not seem to distinguish between the real and the imagined according to brain imaging data.

Based on this, researchers hypothesized that the ventriloquism aftereffect would occur with stimuli that are both seen and imagined.

A series of six studies were conducted with 24 participants each.

In the adaptation phase, participants imagined a circle appearing at a specific location on a screen. At the same time they heard a white noise coming from one of the three locations behind the screen – left, right or centre.

In the test phase, they heard bursts of white noise coming from random locations and they had to indicate where the noise came from – left or right side of the screen.

The findings show that imagining a circle simultaneously with hearing the white noise was enough to produce the ventriloquism aftereffect as shown by the results of the test phase.

The participant’s responses in the test phase were influenced with the specific imagery-sound pairing they experienced in the adaptation phase.

The study showed that what we imagine seeing can affect our future perception as much as what we actually see.

For the aftereffect to emerge, the sounds presented in the first two phases must be consistent.

In four studies, the adaptation and test phase featured the same tone and that’s when the researchers found that the ventriloquism aftereffect emerged – in response to both mental imagery and visual stimuli.

This aftereffect did not take place when the adaptation phase featured a different tone and the test phase featured white noise.

The findings of the study suggest that what we imagine can change our perception across our sensory systems, which ultimately leads to how we perceive information from the real world.

Source: Psychological Science