ORCID

0000-0001-9658-8053

Date of Award

Winter 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

1-14-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Social/Personality Psychology

First Advisor

Ronald Friedman

Committee Members

Gregory Cox, Heather Sheridan

Keywords

motion onset asynchrony (MOA), expectation violation, temporal incongruency, cognitive-affective trade-off, spatial audio, extended reality (xR)

Subject Categories

Cognitive Psychology | Social Psychology

Abstract

This research presents the first systematic investigation of motion-onset asynchrony (MOA) as a form of audiovisual temporal incongruency grounded in contemporary spatial audio and extended reality (xR) systems. MOA—the delay between the onset of visual and auditory motion—was manipulated at three levels (0 s, 1.1 s, 3 s) to test its effects on cognitive (memory) and affective (liking) outcomes during short 2D animated video viewing. Guided by inverted-U models of expectation violation, it was hypothesized that moderate MOA would be associated with the highest memory performance and liking ratings and that liking would mediate MOA’s effects on memory. Across two studies, MOA produced limited and inconsistent behavioral effects: perceptual differentiation among MOA levels was weak, preference ratings were unaffected, and memory effects were restricted to a single subcomponent showing the hypothesized inverted-U pattern. Exploratory analyses revealed substantial individual differences in MOA sensitivity, suggesting that group-level effects may have been attenuated by variability in perceptual thresholds. Rather than indicating that MOA lacks psychological relevance, the findings suggest several perceptual, attentional, evaluative, and individual-level constraints that may limit MOA detectability under the present stimulus and task conditions, including imprecise expectation formation under interaural level difference (ILD)-only panning, ambiguity in motion-onset perception, attentional variability at motion onset, the possibility that MOA was processed implicitly rather than explicitly, and individual differences in motion-onset detection latency. Conceptually, the results motivate treating MOA as a potentially meaningful construct for future work aimed at extending models of temporal binding, compensation, recalibration, modality dominance, and temporal directionality into motion-based contexts. Methodologically, the work identifies promising pathways for subsequent investigations, including work aimed at improving the validity of MOA as an expectation-violation manipulation and adopting more sensitive approaches to measuring MOA’s perceptual and behavioral consequences. Together, these contributions establish a foundation for future research on motion-based audiovisual incongruency and offer tentative guidance for optimizing temporal alignment in immersive media and xR system design.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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