Crossing effects in the tactile temporal order judgment task: a meta-analysis.

The tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) task is widely used in multisensory neuroscience. Participants judge which of two tactile stimuli, one on each hand, came first. A key finding is that TOJ performance declines when the arms are crossed, likely due to interactions among tactile, proprioceptive, and visual information. The TOJ crossing effect has been widely reported. However, studies have used different analysis methods, leaving open the question of whether the choice of method influences the magnitude of the effect. Some studies have also reported that the crossing effect is modulated by moderators such as the availability of visual information, response modality, or speeded-response requirements. Through a systematic, exhaustive literature search, we identified 85 experiments in 51 publications that investigated the TOJ crossing effect, of which 39 experiments from 29 publications reported sufficient information for inclusion in a meta-analysis and aligned with the focus of our study. This analysis estimated the crossing effect's size at approximately 1.45. Checks for potential publication bias indicated that this estimate may be inflated, with a corrected estimate of 0.97 using a regression-based adjustment for small-study effects (Rücker's method) and 1.4 based on p-curve analysis of the reported