Intermodal Perception of Temporal Order and Motor Skills: Effects of Age

Abstract

Employing visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli, intermodal differences in perceptual latency were inferred by means of perception of temporal order (PTO) and by varieties of serial reaction times (RT) to the same stimuli. Skill at reading, peg board, tapping, and tracking was also determined for the same Ss. Mean intermodal differences in latency inferred from PTO were significantly different from those obtained from mean RTs. A correlation matrix showed that individual differences in visual, auditory and tactile latencies inferred from PTO were relatively independent of latencies inferred from RT. Consonant with previous studies, PTO scores correlated with reading rate and also with peg board speed. Taking age of Ss into account, the latter correlations were seen to be due exclusively to the presence of older Ss, who did show a correlation between PTO and RT. It was hypothesized that aged Ss show a decrease in perceptual “channel capacity” and a resulting overloading of short-term memory when faced with a complex perceptual and motor task.