Audiovisual temporal asynchrony differentially influences material property and action quality judgements: Evidence for stable individual differences in material perception

In everyday life, audiovisual temporal correspondence, action quality and material properties are perceived simultaneously during natural interactions. However, these aspects of perception have largely been investigated separately. Examining how audiovisual temporal asynchrony affects material property and action quality judgements therefore provides a useful approach to identifying the information underlying multisensory perception. Whether such effects are mediated primarily by temporal information or require additional event-related information beyond temporal correspondence remains unclear. The present study investigated how audiovisual temporal asynchrony affects material property and action quality judgements in relation to simultaneity judgement (SJ) and temporal order judgement (TOJ). Using naturalistic video stimuli depicting egg cracking (Experiment 1) and grissini breaking (Experiment 2), participants performed SJ, TOJ and perceptual evaluation tasks to examine whether the observed effects generalised across different everyday material interactions. Action quality judgement (skilfulness) was robustly and consistently modulated by temporal asynchrony, exhibiting patterns closely aligned with SJ, indicating a primary reliance on temporal information. In contrast, material property judgement (hardness) exhibited marked inter-individual variability and no consistent group-level pattern. Instead, observers exhibited distinct response profiles that remained highly stable across stimulus types and over extended time intervals. These results demonstrate a dissociation between action quality and material property judgements: whereas action quality judgement primarily depends on temporal correspondence, material property judgement reflects stable and reproducible individual response profiles in the use of event-related information beyond temporal correspondence rather than random variability. The findings highlight that audiovisual temporal asynchrony contributes differently to action quality and material property judgements.