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Categorical congruence facilitates multisensory associative learning.

ABSTRACT: Learning about objects often requires making arbitrary associations among multisensory properties, such as the taste and appearance of a food or the face and voice of a person. However, the multisensory properties of individual objects usually are statistically constrained, such that some properties are more likely to co-occur than others, on the basis of their category. For example, male faces are more likely to co-occur with characteristically male voices than with female voices. Here, we report evidence that these natural multisensory statistics play a critical role in the learning of novel, arbitrary associative pairs. In Experiment 1, we found that learning of pairs consisting of human voices and gender-congruent faces was superior to learning of pairs consisting of human voices and gender-incongruent faces or of pairs consisting of human voices and pictures of inanimate objects (plants and rocks). In Experiment 2, we found that this "categorical congruency" advantage extended to nonhuman stimuli, as well-namely, to pairs of class-congruent animal pictures and vocalizations (e.g., dogs and barks) versus class-incongruent pairs (e.g., dogs and bird chirps). These findings suggest that associating multisensory properties that are statistically consistent with the various objects that we encounter in our daily lives is a privileged form of learning.

SUBMITTER: Barenholtz E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6469507 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Categorical congruence facilitates multisensory associative learning.

Barenholtz Elan E Lewkowicz David J DJ Davidson Meredith M Mavica Lauren L

Psychonomic bulletin & review 20141001 5

Learning about objects often requires making arbitrary associations among multisensory properties, such as the taste and appearance of a food or the face and voice of a person. However, the multisensory properties of individual objects usually are statistically constrained, such that some properties are more likely to co-occur than others, on the basis of their category. For example, male faces are more likely to co-occur with characteristically male voices than with female voices. Here, we repo ...[more]

PMID: 24671776

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Project description:BackgroundImpaired naming is a ubiquitous symptom in all types of aphasia, which often adversely impacts independence, quality of life, and recovery of affected individuals. Previous research has demonstrated that naming can be facilitated by phonological and semantic cueing strategies that are largely incorporated into the treatment of anomic disturbances. Beneficial effects of cueing, whereby naming becomes faster and more accurate, are often attributed to the priming mechanisms occurring within the distributed language network.ObjectiveWe proposed and explored two novel cueing techniques: (1) Silent Visuomotor Cues (SVC), which provided articulatory information of target words presented in the form of silent videos, and (2) Semantic Auditory Cues (SAC), which consisted of acoustic information semantically relevant to target words (ringing for "telephone"). Grounded in neurophysiological evidence, we hypothesized that both SVC and SAC might aid communicative effectiveness possibly by triggering activity in perceptual and semantic language regions, respectively.MethodsTen participants with chronic non-fluent aphasia were recruited for a longitudinal clinical intervention. Participants were split into dyads (i.e., five pairs of two participants) and required to engage in a turn-based peer-to-peer language game using the Rehabilitation Gaming System for aphasia (RGSa). The objective of the RGSa sessions was to practice communicative acts, such as making a request. We administered SVCs and SACs in a pseudorandomized manner at the moment when the active player selected the object to be requested from the interlocutor. For the analysis, we compared the times from selection to the reception of the desired object between cued and non-cued trials.ResultsNaming accuracy, as measured by a standard clinical scale, significantly improved for all stimuli at each evaluation point, including the follow-up. Moreover, the results yielded beneficial effects of both SVC and SAC cues on word naming, especially at the early intervention sessions when the exposure to the target lexicon was infrequent.ConclusionsThis study supports the efficacy of the proposed cueing strategies which could be integrated into the clinic or mobile technology to aid naming even at the chronic stages of aphasia. These findings are consistent with sensorimotor accounts of language processing, suggesting a coupling between language, motor, and semantic brain regions.Trial registrationNCT02928822 . Registered 30 May 2016.

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Categorical congruence facilitates multisensory associative learning.

Publications

Categorical congruence facilitates multisensory associative learning.

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