Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP), Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via E. Melen, 83, 16152 Genova Italy; Università degli studi di Genova, Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering, Via all'Opera Pia, 13, 16145 Genova Italy.
Unit for Visually Impaired People (U-VIP), Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via E. Melen, 83, 16152 Genova Italy.
Behav Brain Res. 2019 Dec 30;376:112185. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112185. Epub 2019 Aug 28.
Vision is the most accurate sense for spatial representation, whereas audition is for temporal representation. However, how different sensory modalities shape the development of spatial and temporal representations is still unclear. Here, 45 children aged 11-13 years were tested to investigate the abilities to evaluate spatial features of auditory stimuli during bisection tasks, while conflicting or non-conflicting spatial and temporal information was delivered. Since audition is fundamental for temporal representation, the hypothesis was that temporal information could influence auditory spatial representation development. Results show a strong interaction between the temporal and the spatial domain. Younger children are not able to build complex spatial representations when the temporal domain is uninformative about space. However, when the spatial information is coherent with the temporal information children of all age are able to decode complex spatial relationships. When spatial and temporal cues are conflicting, younger children are strongly attracted by the temporal instead of spatial information, while older participants result unaffected by the cross-domain conflict. These findings suggest that during development temporal representation of events is used to infer spatial coordinates of the environment, offering important opportunities for new teaching and rehabilitation strategies.
视觉是空间表示最准确的感觉，而听觉是时间表示。然而，不同的感觉模态如何塑造空间和时间表示的发展仍然不清楚。在这里，对 45 名年龄在 11-13 岁的儿童进行了测试，以调查他们在二分任务中评估听觉刺激的空间特征的能力，同时传递冲突或非冲突的空间和时间信息。由于听觉对于时间表示是基本的，因此假设时间信息可能会影响听觉空间表示的发展。结果表明，时间域和空间域之间存在很强的相互作用。当时间域对空间没有信息时，年幼的孩子无法建立复杂的空间表示。然而，当空间信息与时间信息一致时，所有年龄段的孩子都能够解码复杂的空间关系。当空间和时间线索冲突时，年幼的孩子更倾向于受时间信息的影响，而不是空间信息，而年龄较大的参与者则不受跨域冲突的影响。这些发现表明，在发展过程中，事件的时间表示被用来推断环境的空间坐标，为新的教学和康复策略提供了重要机会。
