Revealing the origin of the audiovisual bounce-inducing effect

The audiovisual bounce inducing effect (ABE) is a bouncing percept induced by the presentation of a sound in a motion display otherwise perceived as streaming. The literature suggests that the origin of the ABE is double: the effect stems from the action of an attentional component and that of a non-attentional component. However, the type of response classically gathered in ABE studies does not enable the disentanglement of the two components. Here, we used the ABE stimuli in a detection task and observed the effect of the sound on participants’ sensitivity (hypothesised to be linked to the attentional component) and on response bias (hypothesised to be linked to the non-attentional component). The sound affected sensitivity and response bias in a way that is consistent with that expected by a selective modulation of the attentional and nonattentional component by the sound.