Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, 20146, Hamburg, Germany.
Molecular Mind Lab, IMT School for Advanced Studies, 55100, Lucca, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 23;11(1):6693. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-86227-w.
Visual deprivation in childhood can lead to lifelong impairments in multisensory processing. Here, the Size-Weight Illusion (SWI) was used to test whether visuo-haptic integration recovers after early visual deprivation. Normally sighted individuals perceive larger objects to be lighter than smaller objects of the same weight. In Experiment 1, individuals treated for dense bilateral congenital cataracts (who had no patterned visual experience at birth), individuals treated for developmental cataracts (who had patterned visual experience at birth, but were visually impaired), congenitally blind individuals and normally sighted individuals had to rate the weight of manually explored cubes that differed in size (Small, Medium, Large) across two possible weights (350 g, 700 g). In Experiment 2, individuals treated for dense bilateral congenital cataracts were compared to sighted individuals in a similar task using a string set-up, which removed haptic size cues. In both experiments, indistinguishable SWI effects were observed across all groups. These results provide evidence that early aberrant vision does not interfere with the development of the SWI, and suggest a recovery of the integration of size and weight cues provided by the visual and haptic modality.
儿童时期的视觉剥夺会导致多感官处理的终身损伤。在这里，大小-重量错觉（SWI）被用来测试早期视觉剥夺后视触整合是否恢复。正常视力的人会感觉到较大的物体比相同重量的较小物体轻。在实验 1 中，接受过密集性双侧先天性白内障治疗的个体（出生时没有任何模式化视觉体验）、接受过发育性白内障治疗的个体（出生时有模式化视觉体验，但视力受损）、先天性失明个体和正常视力个体必须对大小不同（小、中、大）的手动探索立方体的重量进行评估，这些立方体的重量在两种可能的重量（350 克和 700 克）之间变化。在实验 2 中，使用字符串设置将接受过密集性双侧先天性白内障治疗的个体与正常视力个体进行了类似的任务比较，该设置消除了触知觉大小线索。在这两个实验中，所有组都观察到了不可区分的 SWI 效应。这些结果提供了证据表明早期异常视觉不会干扰 SWI 的发展，并表明视觉和触觉模态提供的大小和重量线索的整合得到了恢复。
