Active sensory substitution allows fast learning via effective motor-sensory strategies

Abstract

Summary We examined the development of new sensing abilities in adults by training participants to perceive remote objects through their fingers. Using an Active-Sensing based sensory Substitution device (ASenSub), participants quickly learned to perceive fast via the new modality and preserved their high performance for more than 20 months. Both sighted and blind participants exhibited almost complete transfer of performance from 2D images to novel 3D physical objects. Perceptual accuracy and speed using the ASenSub were, on average, 300% and 600% better than previous reports for 2D images and 3D objects. This improvement is attributed to the ability of the participants to employ their own motor-sensory strategies. Sighted participants dominant strategy was based on motor-sensory convergence on the most informative regions of objects, similarly to fixation patterns in vision. Congenitally, blind participants did not show such a tendency, and many of their exploratory procedures resembled those observed with natural touch.

Idiosyncratic selection of active touch for shape perception

“…The tendency to use focal palpation was hardly affected by the participants’ physiological thresholds. Focal palpation was recently reported to frequently occur when blindfolded sighted human subjects explore objects (2D and 3D) using an active sensory substitution device 63 . Interestingly, such focal palpation was typically not observed with blind subjects exploring the same objects with the same device—their palpation covered the explored objects more uniformly.…”

“…Sample size in this experiment is similar to the sample size used in previous works which aimed to characterize trajectories of hand motion 30 , 63 , 77 – 79 . This sample (11 subjects recorded for four or five sessions, total of 1196 trials across all subjects and sessions) allowed the characterization of hand movement strategies and the study of their dependencies on the sensed shapes and on the measured physiological thresholds.…”

Thalamocortical loops as temporal demodulators across senses

“…Touch and vision share a key perceptual strategy: they scan their environments with a lateral motion of two-dimensional arrays of receptors. Since receptors are mostly sensitive to changes (within their dynamic ranges), sensor motion is what allows the perception of stationary objects, encoding space by time 22 , 80 . The transduction of auditory signals (i.e., pressure waves) to neural signals is performed in the cochlea where the basic organization of receptors is different than the one observed in touch and vision.…”

Comparing the Taiwanese learning effects of Shaking‐On and Kahoot!

“…However, different designs of e‐learning platforms have different functions for students to interact that promote in them different psychological outcomes, by shaping their learning behaviours and enhancing their motivation and engagement (Bitrian et al, 2021). When shaping learning behaviour, interacting with the two dimensions of vision and touch regulates a common sensory strategy whereby interaction patterns determine learning activations (Zilbershtain‐Kra et al, 2021). Moreover, simple human activities can be characterized by using a small set of sensors embedded in wearable devices, for example, the gyroscope.…”