Benefits of Stimulus Congruency for Multisensory Facilitation of Visual Learning

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2008 Jan 31

PMID 18231612

Citations 53

Authors

Robyn S Kim

Aaron R Seitz

Ladan Shams

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Studies of perceptual learning have largely focused on unisensory stimuli. However, multisensory interactions are ubiquitous in perception, even at early processing stages, and thus can potentially play a role in learning. Here, we examine the effect of auditory-visual congruency on visual learning.

Methodology/principle Findings: Subjects were trained over five days on a visual motion coherence detection task with either congruent audiovisual, or incongruent audiovisual stimuli. Comparing performance on visual-only trials, we find that training with congruent audiovisual stimuli produces significantly better learning than training with incongruent audiovisual stimuli or with only visual stimuli.

Conclusions/significance: This advantage from stimulus congruency during training suggests that the benefits of multisensory training may result from audiovisual interactions at a perceptual rather than cognitive level.

Citing Articles

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