A New Sensory Skill Shows Automaticity and Integration Features in Multisensory Interactions [article]

James Negen, Laura-Ashleigh Bird, Heather Slater, Lore Thaler, Marko Nardini
2021 bioRxiv   pre-print
ABSTRACTPeople can learn new sensory skills that augment their perception, such as human echolocation. However, it is not clear to what extent these can become an integral part of the perceptual repertoire. Can they show automatic use, integrated with the other senses, or do they remain cognitively-demanding, cumbersome, and separate? Here, participants learned to judge distance using an echo-like auditory cue. We show that use of this new skill met three key criteria for automaticity and
more » ... y integration: (1) enhancing the speed of perceptual decisions; (2) processing through a non-verbal route and (3) integration with vision in an efficient, Bayes-like manner. We also show some limits following short training: integration was less-than-optimal, and there was no mandatory fusion of signals. These results demonstrate key ways in which new sensory skills can become automatic and integrated, and suggest that sensory augmentation systems may have benefits beyond current applications for sensory loss.
doi:10.1101/2021.01.05.425430 fatcat:xriugppkzna37h34tanpkpqqsu