Department of Psychology, Durham University Durham, DH1 3LE, Durham, UK.
Sci Rep. 2018 Nov 15;8(1):16880. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-35046-7.
Humans are effective at dealing with noisy, probabilistic information in familiar settings. One hallmark of this is Bayesian Cue Combination: combining multiple noisy estimates to increase precision beyond the best single estimate, taking into account their reliabilities. Here we show that adults also combine a novel audio cue to distance, akin to human echolocation, with a visual cue. Following two hours of training, subjects were more precise given both cues together versus the best single cue. This persisted when we changed the novel cue's auditory frequency. Reliability changes also led to a re-weighting of cues without feedback, showing that they learned something more flexible than a rote decision rule for specific stimuli. The main findings replicated with a vibrotactile cue. These results show that the mature sensory apparatus can learn to flexibly integrate new sensory skills. The findings are unexpected considering previous empirical results and current models of multisensory learning.
人类善于在熟悉的环境中处理嘈杂、概率性的信息。其中一个标志是贝叶斯线索组合：将多个嘈杂的估计值结合起来，以提高精度，超过最佳的单一估计值，并考虑到它们的可靠性。在这里，我们表明成年人也可以将一种新的音频线索（类似于人类的回声定位）与视觉线索结合起来。经过两个小时的训练，与最佳单一线索相比，受试者在同时使用两个线索时更准确。当我们改变新线索的听觉频率时，这种情况仍然存在。可靠性的变化也导致了没有反馈的线索的重新加权，这表明它们学习到的不仅仅是针对特定刺激的机械决策规则，而是更灵活的东西。主要发现与振动触觉线索一致。这些结果表明，成熟的感觉器官可以学习灵活地整合新的感觉技能。考虑到先前的经验结果和当前的多感觉学习模型，这些发现是出乎意料的。
