Tests of auditory-visual integration efficiency within the framework of the fuzzy logical model of perception

Abstract

The fuzzy logical model of perception [FLMP, Massaro, Perceiving Talking Faces: From Speech Perception to a Behavioral Principle (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998)] has been extremely successful at describing performance across a wide range of ecological domains as well as for a broad spectrum of individuals. Because the model predicts optimal or maximally efficient integration, an important issue is whether this is the case for most individuals. Three databases are evaluated to determine to what extent a significant quantitative improvement in predictive ability can be obtained if integration is assumed to be somewhat inefficient. For the most part, there were no significant signs of inefficient integration. The previous differences found by Grant and Seitz [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104, 2438-2450 (1998)] must be due to their measures of efficiency, which appear to be invalid and/or conflate information with integration efficiency. Finally, the descriptive ability of the FLMP is shown to be theoretically informative and not simply the model's ability to describe any possible outcome.