Lobo Lorena, Travieso David, Barrientos Antonio, Jacobs David M
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Centro de Automática y Robótica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 5;9(6):e98801. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098801. eCollection 2014.
Practice is essential for an adapted use of sensory substitution devices. Understanding the learning process is therefore a fundamental issue in this field of research. This study presents a novel sensory substitution device worn on the lower leg and uses the device to study learning. The device includes 32 vibrotactile actuators that each vibrate as a function of the distance to the nearest surface in a particular direction. Participants wearing the device were asked to approach an object and to step on the object. Two 144-trial practice conditions were compared in a pretest-practice-posttest design. Participants in the first condition practiced with vibrotactile stimulation while blindfolded. Participants in the second condition practiced with vibrotactile stimulation along with normal vision. Performance was relatively successful, both types of practice led to improvements in performance, and practice without vision led to a larger reduction in the number of errors than practice with vision. These results indicate that distance-based sensory substitution is promising in addition to the more traditional light-intensity-based sensory substitution and that providing appropriate sensorimotor couplings is more important than applying the stimulation to highly sensitive body parts. The observed advantage of practice without vision over practice with vision is interpreted in terms of the guidance hypothesis of feedback and learning.
实践对于适应性地使用感官替代设备至关重要。因此，理解学习过程是该研究领域的一个基本问题。本研究提出了一种佩戴在小腿上的新型感官替代设备，并使用该设备来研究学习。该设备包括32个振动触觉致动器，每个致动器根据在特定方向上到最近表面的距离而振动。要求佩戴该设备的参与者靠近一个物体并踩在该物体上。在一个前测-实践-后测设计中比较了两种各有144次试验的实践条件。第一种条件下的参与者在蒙眼时进行振动触觉刺激练习。第二种条件下的参与者在有正常视力的同时进行振动触觉刺激练习。表现相对成功，两种类型的练习都导致了表现的提高，并且无视觉练习比有视觉练习导致的错误数量减少得更多。这些结果表明，除了更传统的基于光强度的感官替代之外，基于距离的感官替代也很有前景，并且提供适当的感觉运动耦合比将刺激应用于高度敏感的身体部位更重要。无视觉练习相对于有视觉练习所观察到的优势是根据反馈和学习的指导假设来解释的。
