Multisensory stimuli enhance the effectiveness of equivalence learning in healthy children and adolescents

Abstract

It has been demonstrated earlier in healthy adult volunteers that visually and multisensory (audiovisual) guided equivalence learning are similarly effective. Thus, these processes seem to be independent of stimulus modality. The question arises as to whether this phenomenon can be observed also healthy children and adolescents. To assess this, visual and audiovisual equivalence learning was tested in 157 healthy participants younger than 18 years of age, in both a visual and an audiovisual paradigm consisting of acquisition, retrieval and generalization phases. Performance during the acquisition phase (building of associations), was significantly better in the multisensory paradigm, but there was no difference between the reaction times (RTs). Performance during the retrieval phase (where the previously learned associations are tested) was also significantly better in the multisensory paradigm, and RTs were significantly shorter. On the other hand, transfer (generalization) performance (where hitherto not learned but predictable associations are tested) was not significantly enhanced in the multisensory paradigm, while RTs were somewhat shorter. Linear regression analysis revealed that all the studied psychophysical parameters in both paradigms showed significant correlation with the age of the participants. Audiovisual stimulation enhanced acquisition and retrieval as compared to visual stimulation only, regardless of whether the subjects were above or below 12 years of age. Our results demonstrate that multisensory stimuli significantly enhance association learning and retrieval in the context of sensory guided equivalence learning in healthy children and adolescents. However, the audiovisual gain was significantly higher in the cohort below 12 years of age, which suggests that audiovisually guided equivalence learning is still in development in childhood.

Enhanced audiovisual associative pair learning in migraine without aura in adult patients: An unexpected finding

“…Importantly, in a recent study conducted on healthy children and adolescents (aged 5 to 17 years) with RAET and SFT, we demonstrated significantly superior multisensory associative pair learning in migraine-free children and adolescents as compared to purely visual pair learning (20). To put it simply, in migraine-free children and adolescents, audiovisual pair learning appears to be more efficient than simple, unimodal visual pair learning.…”

“…Certain elements of this section may be similar to our earlier publications (5,(18)(19)(20)22,23), as we consistently employ the same cognitive test paradigm, across various populations, and under the same testing conditions. This approach allows for a reliable comparison of data among different populations.…”