Arno P, Capelle C, Wanet-Defalque M C, Catalan-Ahumada M, Veraart C
Neural Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory, Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
Perception. 1999;28(8):1013-29. doi: 10.1068/p281013.
Recognition tasks of simple visual patterns have been used to assess an early visual--auditory sensory-substitution system, consisting of the coupling of a rough model of the human retina with an inverse model of the cochlea, by means of a pixel-frequency relationship. The potential advantage of the device, compared with previous ones, is to give the blind the ability to both localise and recognise visual patterns. Four evaluation sessions assessed the performance of twenty-four blindfolded sighted subjects using the device. Subjects had to recognise twenty-five visual patterns, one at a time, using a head-mounted small camera and interpreting the corresponding sounds given by the device. Half the subjects were trained by means of a correction feedback procedure during ten one-hour training sessions embedded in between the evaluation sessions. Results revealed extremely successful training effects. Performance of trained subjects significantly increased with practice compared with the untrained control group. The improvement was also observed for new patterns, demonstrating a learning-process generalisation. The negative correlation observed between scores and processing time showed that the subjects' response accuracy was related to their speed. In conclusion, simple pattern recognition is possible with a fairly natural vision-to-audition coding scheme, given the possibility for the subjects to have sensory--motor interactions while using the device.
简单视觉模式的识别任务已被用于评估一种早期视觉 - 听觉感官替代系统，该系统通过像素 - 频率关系，由人类视网膜的粗略模型与耳蜗的逆模型耦合而成。与之前的设备相比，该设备的潜在优势在于使盲人能够定位并识别视觉模式。四个评估环节使用该设备评估了24名蒙眼的有视力受试者的表现。受试者必须使用头戴式小型摄像头识别25种视觉模式，每次识别一种，并解读设备给出的相应声音。一半受试者在评估环节之间嵌入的十次一小时训练课程中，通过校正反馈程序进行训练。结果显示出极其成功的训练效果。与未训练的对照组相比，训练后的受试者的表现随着练习显著提高。对于新模式也观察到了这种改善，表明学习过程具有普遍性。分数与处理时间之间的负相关表明受试者的反应准确性与其速度有关。总之，鉴于受试者在使用该设备时有感觉 - 运动交互的可能性，使用相当自然的视觉到听觉编码方案就可以实现简单的模式识别。
