Sound travels more slowly than light. This is apparent in a thunderstorm. We can often see lightening seconds before we hear the thunder. Sound can also interact with vision. For instance, in the stream bounce illusion two dots move toward one another, become superimposed, and then move away from one another. The dots can be seen to either pass through, or to bounce off, one another. However, if a brief tone is sounded at an appropritae moment oberservers are biased to see the two dots as bouncing off one another.

We wanted to determine if, when sound and sight interact, there is a perceptual compensation for the slower speed of sound. If there is a compensation, the appropriate timing for the tone should not vary as a function of viewing distance when sight and sound have a common source. Instead, we found that when we presented the tone over a speaker placed near a visual display, the appropriate timing for the tone varied in a manner that closely approximated the difference between the speeds of light and sound. In contrast, when we presented the tone over headphones, the appropriate timing for the tone did not vary with viewing distance.