Intersensory Redundancy Enhances Memory in Bobwhite Quail Embryos

Abstract

Information presented concurrently and redundantly to 2 or more senses (intersensory redundancy) has been shown to recruit attention and promote perceptual learning of amodal stimulus properties in animal embryos and human infants. This study examined whether the facilitative effect of intersensory redundancy also extends to the domain of memory. We assessed bobwhite quail chicks' ability to remember and prefer an individual maternal call presented either unimodally or redundantly and synchronously with patterned light during the period prior to hatching. Embryos provided with unimodal auditory exposure failed to prefer the familiar call over a novel maternal call postnatally at 48 hr and 72 hr following exposure. In contrast, embryos provided with redundant, synchronous audiovisual stimulation significantly preferred the familiar call at 48 hr following exposure, but not at 72 hr. A second experiment provided chicks with a single 10‐min refamiliarization with the familiar call at either 48 hr or 72 hr following hatching. Chicks given only unimodal auditory exposure prior to hatching did not appear to benefit from this brief postnatal refamiliarization, showing no preference for the familiar call at either 72 or 96 hr. Chicks that received redundant audiovisual stimulation prenatally showed a significant preference for the familiar call (following the brief reexpo sure 24 hr earlier) at both 72 and 96 hr of age. These results are the first to demonstrate that redundantly specified information is remembered longer and reactivated more easily than the same information presented unimodally. These findings provide further evidence of the salience of intersensory redundancy in guiding selective attention and perceptual learning during early development.

Intersensory redundancy accelerates preverbal numerical competence

“…For example, the greater amount of information provided through multisensory stimulation could increase infants' general arousal and provide them with more information through which to compare numerical values. To discount this hypothesis, prior studies asking whether intersensory redundancy enhances cognitive, perceptual, and even social development have run control conditions in which asynchronous or non-redundant multisensory information is presented to the infant (i.e., Bahrick and Lickliter, 2000;Flom and Bahrick, 2007;Lickliter et al, 2002Lickliter et al, , 2004. In all such situations, infants fail to discriminate the property being tested unless it is synchronously and redundantly specified across multiple modalities.…”

Detection of Modality-Specific Properties in Unimodal and Bimodal Events during Prenatal Development

“…Quail embryos are able to learn a maternal call significantly faster when the rate, rhythm, and duration of the call is synchronized with a light, thus providing intersensory redundancy, than when the call is presented alone (Lickliter, Bahrick, & Honeycutt, 2002). Further, Lickliter, Bahrick, and Honeycutt (2004) found that chicks receiving redundant bimodal stimulation of the temporal features of the maternal call prenatally remembered the call four times longer into postnatal development than chicks receiving prenatal unimodal exposure.…”

The Effect of Prenatal Auditory Enrichment on Perceptual Narrowing in Bobwhite Quail Neonates

“…Both animal and human infants are particularly adept at attending to amodal information early in development, since amodal information, such as intensity, tempo, and frequency, is present across sense modalities and can therefore be perceived concurrently. The synchronous pairing of two (or more) sense modalities recruits selective attention, thereby improving subsequent learning and memory (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000;Lickliter, Bahrick, & Honeycutt, 2004).…”

“…This experiment manipulated prenatal auditory stimulation in bobwhite quail embryos from the onset of auditory function to assess whether it is possible to keep the perceptual narrowing window open and effectively interfere with the emergence of a species typical auditory preference postnatally. Classic and contemporary work with precocial birds has demonstrated a robust effect of unimodal auditory and bimodal auditory/visual or auditory/vestibular stimulation on facilitating learning and memory for a species typical maternal call (Lickliter, Bahrick, & Honeycutt, 2004;Lickliter & Hellwell, 1992;Honeycutt & Lickliter, 2001;Vaillant, Bahrick, & Lickliter, 2009). However, these methods have yet to be applied to perceptual narrowing.…”