Loconsole Maria, Gasparini Andrea, Regolin Lucia
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy.
School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK.
Vision (Basel). 2022 Apr 28;6(2):24. doi: 10.3390/vision6020024.
Our senses are constantly reached by a multitude of stimuli from all different sensory modalities. To create a coherent representation of the environment, we must integrate the various unimodal inputs that refer to the same object into a single multimodal representation. In some cases, however, we tend to bind certain properties of the stimuli without any apparent reason, which is a phenomenon named crossmodal correspondence. For instance, we match a spiky or a rounded shape with the sound "Kiki" or "Bouba", respectively. Similarly, we associate the left hemispace with low luminance and the right one with high luminance. Instances of crossmodal correspondences were described also in other mammals, and recently, a case of space-luminance crossmodal correspondence was reported in birds (i.e., domestic chicks). Here, we investigate the presence of pitch-luminance crossmodal correspondence in three-day-old chicks, employing experimental methods that exploit either predisposed or learned processes. While failing to report evidence for this phenomenon, we discuss the difference between statistical and structural crossmodal correspondences and the possible role of environmental factors in determining their emergence. Moreover, we discuss the importance of the different experimental methodologies to investigate distinct aspects of this perceptual phenomenon to reach a deeper understanding and unveil the role of innate vs. learned mechanisms.
我们的感官不断受到来自各种不同感觉模态的大量刺激。为了创建一个连贯的环境表征，我们必须将指涉同一物体的各种单模态输入整合为一个单一的多模态表征。然而，在某些情况下，我们往往会毫无明显理由地将刺激的某些属性联系起来，这就是一种名为跨模态对应性的现象。例如，我们分别将尖锐或圆润的形状与 “奇奇” 或 “布巴” 的声音相匹配。同样，我们将左半空间与低亮度联系起来，将右半空间与高亮度联系起来。在其他哺乳动物中也描述了跨模态对应性的实例，最近，在鸟类（即家鸡）中也报道了一例空间 - 亮度跨模态对应性。在这里，我们采用利用先天或学习过程的实验方法，研究三日龄雏鸡中音调 - 亮度跨模态对应性的存在情况。虽然未能报告这一现象的证据，但我们讨论了统计性和结构性跨模态对应性之间的差异以及环境因素在决定它们出现方面的可能作用。此外，我们讨论了不同实验方法对于研究这种感知现象不同方面的重要性，以便更深入地理解并揭示先天与学习机制的作用。
