Self-initiation of visual object motion has little influence on visual mislocalization by auditory stimuli

Sense of agency (SoA) is the subjective feeling that a person causes a change in the external world. The influence of SoA on crossmodal integration has not yet examined thoroughly. We investigated the effects of auditory stimuli on visual localization and its interaction with SoA. In Experiment 1, participants localized the disappearing position of a moving dot while hearing a continuous sound. The sound duration was manipulated. Participants performed the localization task after self-initiating the dot motion (higher SoA) or after the dot moving automatically (lower SoA). Results showed that localization of disappearing position of the dot was clearly manipulated by the sound duration, but auditory-based mislocalization was not influenced by the presence of action. In attempt to attenuate the reliability of visual signals for localization, we made visual stimuli flickered in Experiment 2. However, the results were similar to those of Experiment 1. Our study indicated that the presence of action (or SoA) might not influence auditory-visual integration. We discussed this possibility along with limitations of the present study.