Impact Conference Series "Reaching without vision: proprioceptive and auditory target information in movement guidance"

How do we interact with objects when we cannot see them? Every day, we reach for a ringing phone in the dark or pass a handheld object from one hand to the other, relying entirely on sound and the sense of our own body position. But how do these two senses guide movement, and what happens when they must work together? In this talk, I will address three interconnected questions. First, do auditory and proprioceptive targets produce different movement patterns? Second, when does sensory modality matter during action; does it shape how we prepare a movement, how we execute it, or both? Third, can the coupling of movement and sound actively reshape how we hear the world around us? I will present evidence suggesting that while audition and proprioception can both guide actions toward targets in space, they differ meaningfully in the precision they afford. When combined, the motor system prioritizes the more reliable proprioceptive signal. Yet active movement itself emerges as a powerful tool for recalibrating auditory space, revealing a dynamic, bidirectional relationship between action and perception.

Full affiliation: Haptic Auditory Kinematic Lab (HAKi Lab), College of Natural and Health Sciences, Department of Psychology, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE