Cuturi Luigi F, Tonelli Alessia, Cappagli Giulia, Gori Monica
Unit for Visually Impaired People, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy.
Fondazione "Istituto Neurologico Casimiro Mondino" (IRCSS), Pavia, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2019 Sep 12;10:2068. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02068. eCollection 2019.
Developmental studies have shown that children can associate visual size with non-visual and apparently unrelated stimuli, such as pure tone frequencies. Most research to date has focused on audio-visual size associations by showing that children can associate low pure tone frequencies with large objects, and high pure tone frequencies with small objects. Researchers relate these findings to coarser association, i.e., less precise associations for which binary categories of stimuli are used such as in the case of low versus high frequencies and large versus small visual stimuli. This study investigates how finer, more precise, crossmodal audio-visual associations develop during primary school age (from 6 to 11 years old). To unveil such patterns, we took advantage of a range of auditory pure tones and tested how primary school children match sounds with visually presented shapes. We tested 66 children (6-11 years old) in an audio-visual matching task involving a range of pure tone frequencies. Visual stimuli were circles or angles of different sizes. We asked participants to indicate the shape matching the sound. All children associated large objects/angles with low pitch, and small objects/angles with high pitch sounds. Interestingly, older children made greater use of intermediate visual sizes to provide their responses. Indeed, audio-visual associations for finer differences between stimulus features such as size and pure tone frequencies, may develop later depending on the maturation of supramodal size perception processes. Considering our results, we suggest that audio-visual size correspondences can be used for educational purposes by aiding the discrimination of sizes, including angles of different aperture. Moreover, their use should be shaped according to children's specific developmental stage.
发展研究表明，儿童能够将视觉大小与非视觉且明显不相关的刺激因素联系起来，比如纯音频率。迄今为止，大多数研究都聚焦于视听大小关联，研究表明儿童能够将低纯音频率与大物体联系起来，将高纯音频率与小物体联系起来。研究人员将这些发现与更粗略的关联联系起来，也就是说，对于这种关联而言，刺激因素的二元类别被使用，比如低频与高频以及大视觉刺激与小视觉刺激的情况。本研究调查了在小学年龄段（6至11岁）更精细、更精确的跨模态视听关联是如何发展的。为了揭示这种模式，我们利用了一系列听觉纯音，并测试了小学生如何将声音与视觉呈现的形状进行匹配。我们在一项涉及一系列纯音频率的视听匹配任务中测试了66名儿童（6至11岁）。视觉刺激是不同大小的圆形或角形。我们要求参与者指出与声音匹配的形状。所有儿童都将大物体/角形与低音调联系起来，将小物体/角形与高音调声音联系起来。有趣的是，年龄较大的儿童更多地利用中等视觉大小来做出反应。实际上，对于刺激特征（如大小和纯音频率）之间更细微差异的视听关联，可能会根据超模态大小感知过程的成熟情况而较晚发展。考虑到我们的研究结果，我们建议视听大小对应关系可用于教育目的，通过帮助区分大小，包括不同孔径的角形。此外，其使用应根据儿童的特定发育阶段进行调整。
