University of Hamburg, Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Von-Melle-Park 11, 20146 Hamburg, Germany.
University of Hamburg, Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, Von-Melle-Park 11, 20146 Hamburg, Germany.
Curr Biol. 2020 May 4;30(9):1726-1732.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.02.048. Epub 2020 Mar 19.
It has been hypothesized that crossmodal recalibration plays a crucial role for the development of multisensory integration capabilities [1]. To test the developmental trajectory of multisensory integration and crossmodal recalibration, we used a combined ventriloquist/ventriloquist aftereffect paradigm [2] in children aged 5-9 years. The ventriloquist effect (indicating multisensory integration), that is, the shift of auditory localization toward simultaneously presented but spatially discrepant visual stimuli, was larger in children than in adults, which was attributed to a lower auditory localization precision in the children. In fact, the size of the ventriloquist effect depended on the visual stimulus reliability in both children and adults. In all groups, the ventriloquist effect was best explained by a causal inference model. In contrast to their multisensory integration capabilities, 5-year-old children did not recalibrate. The immediate ventriloquist aftereffect (indicating recalibration after a single exposure to a spatially discrepant audio-visual stimulus) emerged in 6- to 7-year-old children, whereas the cumulative ventriloquist aftereffect (reflecting recalibration to the audio-visual spatial discrepancies over the complete experiment) was not observed before the age of 8 years. First, in contrast to common beliefs, the present results provide evidence that multisensory integration precedes rather than follows crossmodal recalibration during development. Second, we report developmental evidence for a dissociation of the processes involved in multisensory integration and immediate as well as cumulative recalibration. We speculate that multisensory integration is a prerequisite for crossmodal recalibration, because the multisensory percept, rather than unimodal cues, might comprise a crucial signal for the calibration of the sensory systems.
人们假设跨模态重新校准在多感觉整合能力的发展中起着关键作用[1]。为了测试多感觉整合和跨模态重新校准的发展轨迹，我们在 5-9 岁的儿童中使用了联合的腹语/腹语后效范式[2]。腹语效应（表明多感觉整合），即听觉定位向同时呈现但空间上有差异的视觉刺激的转移，在儿童中比在成人中更大，这归因于儿童的听觉定位精度较低。事实上，在儿童和成人中，腹语效应的大小取决于视觉刺激的可靠性。在所有组中，腹语效应都最好由因果推理模型来解释。与他们的多感觉整合能力相反，5 岁的儿童没有重新校准。即时腹语后效（表明在单个空间上有差异的视听刺激暴露后重新校准）出现在 6-7 岁的儿童中，而累积腹语后效（反映了在整个实验过程中对视听空间差异的重新校准）在 8 岁之前没有观察到。首先，与普遍的观点相反，本研究结果提供了证据表明，在发展过程中，多感觉整合先于而不是后于跨模态重新校准。其次，我们报告了发展过程中涉及多感觉整合以及即时和累积重新校准的过程分离的证据。我们推测，多感觉整合是跨模态重新校准的前提，因为多感觉感知，而不是单感觉线索，可能是对感觉系统校准的关键信号。
