Full body aero-tactile integration in speech perception

We follow up on our research demonstrating that aero-tactile information can enhance or interfere with accurate au-ditory perception, even among uninformed and untrained per-ceivers [1]. Mimicking aspiration, we applied slight, inaudibleair puffs on participants’ skin at the ankle, simultaneously withsyllables beginning with aspirated (‘pa’, ‘ta’) and unaspirated(‘ba’, ‘da’) stops, dividing the participants into two groups,thosewithhairy,andthosewithhairlessankles. Sincehairfolli-cleendings(mechanoreceptors)areusedtodetectairturbulence[2] we expected, and observed, that syllables heard simultane-ously with cutaneous air puffs would be more likely to be heardas aspirated, but only among those with hairy ankles. Theseresults demonstrate that information from any part of the bodycan be integrated in speech perception, but the stimuli must beunambiguously relatable to the speech event in order to be inte-grated into speech perception.