Are two cues always better than one? The role of multiple intra-sensory cues compared to multi-cross-sensory cues in children's incidental category learning.

Simultaneous presentation of multisensory cues has been found to facilitate children's learning to a greater extent than unisensory cues (e.g., Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017). Current research into children's multisensory learning, however, does not address whether these findings are due to having multiple cross-sensory cues that enhance stimuli perception or a matter of having multiple cues, regardless of modality, that are informative to category membership. The current study examined the role of multiple cross-sensory cues (e.g., audio-visual) compared to multiple intra-sensory cues (e.g., two visual cues) on children's incidental category learning. On a computerized incidental category learning task, children aged six to ten years (N = 454) were allocated to either a visual-only (V: unisensory), auditory-only (A: unisensory), audio-visual (AV: multisensory), Visual-Visual (VV: multi-cue) or Auditory-Auditory (AA: multi-cue) condition. In children over eight years of age, the availability of two informative cues, regardless of whether they had been presented across two different modalities or within the same modality, was found to be more beneficial to incidental learning than with unisensory cues. In six-year-olds, however, the presence of multiple auditory cues (AA) did not facilitate learning to the same extent as multiple visual cues (VV) or when cues were presented across two different modalities (AV). The findings suggest that multiple sensory cues presented across or within modalities may have differential effects on children's incidental learning across middle childhood, depending on the sensory domain in which they are presented. Implications for the use of multi-cross-sensory and multiple-intra-sensory cues for children's learning across this age range are discussed.

Incidental category learning and cognitive load in a multisensory environment across childhood.

Multisensory information has been shown to facilitate learning (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000; Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, 2017; Jordan & Baker, 2011; Shams & Seitz, 2008). However, although research has examined the modulating effect of unisensory and multisensory distractors on multisensory processing, the extent to which a concurrent unisensory or multisensory cognitive load task would interfere with or support multisensory learning remains unclear. This study examined the role of concurrent task modality on incidental category learning in 6- to 10-year-olds. Participants were engaged in a multisensory learning task while also performing either a unisensory (visual or auditory only) or multisensory (audiovisual) concurrent task (CT). We found that engaging in an auditory CT led to poorer performance on incidental category learning compared with an audiovisual or visual CT, across groups. In 6-year-olds, category test performance was at chance in the auditory-only CT condition, suggesting auditory concurrent tasks may interfere with learning in younger children, but the addition of visual information may serve to focus attention. These findings provide novel insight into the use of multisensory concurrent information on incidental learning. Implications for the deployment of multisensory learning tasks within education across development and developmental changes in modality dominance and ability to switch flexibly across modalities are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cognitive and perceptual development during infancy.

Over the past seven years, the main advances in our understanding of infant development have involved the application of cognitive neuroscience methods such as neuroimaging and computer modelling. Results obtained using these methods have illuminated further the complex interactions between nature and nurture that underlie early postnatal development.

Object knowledge in infancy: current controversies and approaches.

Studies relying on looking-time measures have found evidence of a far more precocious understanding of hidden objects than Piaget originally described. However, there is now a heated controversy surrounding the results from looking-time studies - do they constitute any evidence of a conceptual or explicit understanding of objects? Moreover, even within the looking-time paradigm, young infants show rapid changes in their understanding of what constitutes a legitimate occlusion event, and in their ability to use feature information to individuate or keep track of the number of hidden objects. The picture that emerges from these studies is that young infants have a limited and sometimes fragmented understanding of hidden objects. We suggest that computational modelling could help provide a coherent account of the emergence of object-directed behaviours in infancy, although the fit between current models and existing data remains poor.