1,720,969 research outputs found
Coarse to Fine Audio-Visual Size Correspondences Develop During Primary School Age
No full textDevelopmental studies have shown that children can associate visual size with non-visual and apparently unrelated stimuli, such as pure tone frequencies. Most research to date has focused on audio-visual size associations by showing that children can associate low pure tone frequencies with large objects, and high pure tone frequencies with small objects. Researchers relate these findings to coarser association, i.e., less precise associations for which binary categories of stimuli are used such as in the case of low versus high frequencies and large versus small visual stimuli. This study investigates how finer, more precise, crossmodal audio-visual associations develop during primary school age (from 6 to 11 years old). To unveil such patterns, we took advantage of a range of auditory pure tones and tested how primary school children match sounds with visually presented shapes. We tested 66 children (6–11 years old) in an audio-visual matching task involving a range of pure tone frequencies. Visual stimuli were circles or angles of different sizes. We asked participants to indicate the shape matching the sound. All children associated large objects/angles with low pitch, and small objects/angles with high pitch sounds. Interestingly, older children made greater use of intermediate visual sizes to provide their responses. Indeed, audio-visual associations for finer differences between stimulus features such as size and pure tone frequencies, may develop later depending on the maturation of supramodal size perception processes. Considering our results, we suggest that audio-visual size correspondences can be used for educational purposes by aiding the discrimination of sizes, including angles of different aperture. Moreover, their use should be shaped according to children’s specific developmental stage
Early visual deprivation disrupts the mental representation of numbers in visually impaired children
No full textSeveral shreds of evidence indicate that visual deprivation does not alter numerical competence neither in adults nor in children. However, studies reporting non-impaired numerical abilities in the visually impaired population present some limitations: (a) they mainly assessed the ability to process numbers (e.g. mathematical competence) rather than represent numbers (e.g. mental number line); (b) they principally focused on positive rather than negative number estimates; (c) they investigated numerical abilities in adult individuals except one focusing on children (Crollen et al. in Cognition 210:104586, 2021). Overall, this could limit a comprehensive explanation of the role exerted by vision on numerical processing when vision is compromised. Here we investigated how congenital visual deprivation affects the ability to represent positive and negative numbers in horizontal and sagittal planes in visually impaired children (thirteen children with low vision, eight children with complete blindness, age range 6–15 years old). We adapted the number-to-position paradigm adopted by Crollen et al. (Cognition 210:104586, 2021), asking children to indicate the spatial position of positive and negative numbers on a graduated rule positioned horizontally or sagittally in the frontal plane. Results suggest that long-term visual deprivation alters the ability to identify the spatial position of numbers independently of the spatial plane and the number polarity. Moreover, results indicate that relying on poor visual acuity is detrimental for low vision children when asked to localize both positive and negative numbers in space, suggesting that visual experience might have a differential role in numerical processing depending on number polarity. Such findings add knowledge related to the impact of visual experience on numerical processing. Since both positive and negative numbers are fundamental aspects of learning mathematical principles, the outcomes of the present study inform about the need to implement early rehabilitation strategies to prevent the risk of numerical difficulties in visually impaired children
The influence of yaw rotation on spatial navigation during development
No full textSensory cues enable navigation through space, as they inform us about movement properties, such as the amount of travelled distance and the heading direction. In this study, we focused on the ability to spatially update one's position when only proprioceptive and vestibular information is available. We aimed to investigate the effect of yaw rotation on path integration across development in the absence of visual feedback. To this end, we utilized the triangle completion task: participants were guided through two legs of a triangle and asked to close the shape by walking along its third imagined leg. To test the influence of yaw rotation across development, we tested children between 6 and 11 years old (y.o.) and adults on their perceptions of angles of different degrees. Our results demonstrated that the amount of turn while executing the angle influences performance at all ages, and in some aspects, also interacted with age. Indeed, whilst adults seemed to adjust their heading towards the end of their walked path, younger children took less advantage of this strategy. The amount of disorientation the path induced also affected participants' full maturational ability to spatially navigate with no visual feedback. Increasing induced disorientation required children to be older to reach adult-level performance. Overall, these results provide novel insights on the maturation of spatial navigation-related processes
Editorial: Spatial and Temporal Perception in Sensory Deprivation
No full textThe Research Topic aimed at providing new insights into the impact of sensory deprivation on
spatio-temporal abilities and their subtending cortical circuits. The Research Topic attracted a wide
range of submissions across the spectrum of this theme, and overall, all the submitted papers fall
within one of the following topic contributions: (a) papers identifying impaired/preserved abilities
after a sensory loss/deprivation; (b) papers investigating cortical plasticity and reorganization
mechanisms following sensory loss/deprivation; (c) papers presenting newly developed tools to
assess and/or train spatial impairments resulting from sensory loss/deprivation. With this editorial,
we intend to discuss the findings of the submitted contributions within the broader context of the
literature on the theme by considering the three above-mentioned main contribution categorie
Embodied multisensory training for learning in primary school children
No full textRecent scientific results show that audio feedback associated with body movements can be fundamental during the development to learn new spatial concepts [1], [2]. Within the weDraw project [3], [4], we have investigated how this link can be useful to learn mathematical concepts. Here we present a study investigating how mathematical skills changes after multisensory training based on human-computer interaction (RobotAngle and BodyFraction activities). We show that embodied angle and fractions exploration associated with audio and visual feedback can be used in typical children to improve cognition of spatial mathematical concepts. We finally present the exploitation of our results: an online, optimized version of one of the tested activity to be used at school. The training result suggests that audio and visual feedback associated with body movements is informative for spatial learning and reinforces the idea that spatial representation development is based on sensory-motor interactions
The Audio-Corsi: an acoustic virtual reality-based technological solution for evaluating audio-spatial memory abilities
No full textSpatial memory is a cognitive skill that allows the recall of information about the space, its layout, and items’ locations. We present a novel application built around 3D spatial audio technology to evaluate audio-spatial memory abilities. The sound sources have been spatially distributed employing the 3D Tune-In Toolkit, a virtual acoustic simulator. The participants are presented with sequences of sounds of increasing length emitted from virtual auditory sources around their heads. To identify stimuli positions and register the test responses, we designed a custom-made interface with buttons arranged according to sound locations. We took inspiration from the Corsi-Block test for the experimental procedure, a validated clinical approach for assessing visuo-spatial memory abilities. In two different experimental sessions, the participants were tested with the classical Corsi-Block and, blindfolded, with the proposed task, named Audio-Corsi for brevity. Our results show comparable performance across the two tests in terms of the estimated memory parameter precision. Furthermore, in the Audio-Corsi we observe a lower span compared to the Corsi-Block test. We discuss these results in the context of the theoretical relationship between the auditory and visual sensory modalities and potential applications of this system in multiple scientific and clinical contexts
Perceiving size through sound in sighted and visually impaired children
No full textAssociations between sensory features of different natures are defined as crossmodal correspondences. In the context of size perception, low pitch sound frequencies are often associated with larger objects and high pitch with smaller objects. Here we investigate such crossmodal correspondences in sighted and visually-impaired children. In Experiment 1, after listening to sounds (250–5000 Hz pure tones), children aged 6–11 years were asked to draw a circle "as big as the sound was". In Experiment 2, children aged 6–14 years who were blind or had low vision performed a similar task. In accordance with previous research, we observed that the circle size drawn depends on participants’ age and we confirm the presence of pitch-size associations in sighted children. In visually-impaired children, such associations are influenced by residual vision, suggesting an anchoring of size perception to level of residual vision. These results reveal novel dynamics underlying the advancing of visual loss and the emergence of compensatory mechanisms in childhood
Informing the design of a multisensory learning environment for elementary mathematics learning
No full textIt is well known that primary school children may face difficulties in acquiring mathematical competence, possibly because teaching is generally based on formal lessons with little opportunity to exploit more multisensory-based activities within the classroom. To overcome such difficulties, we report here the exemplary design of a novel multisensory learning environment for teaching mathematical concepts based on meaningful inputs from elementary school teachers. First, we developed and administered a questionnaire to 101 teachers asking them to rate based on their experience the learning difficulty for specific arithmetical and geometrical concepts encountered by elementary school children. Additionally, the questionnaire investigated the feasibility to use multisensory information to teach mathematical concepts. Results show that challenging concepts differ depending on children school level, thus providing a guidance to improve teaching strategies and the design of new and emerging learning technologies accordingly. Second, we obtained specific and practical design inputs with workshops involving elementary school teachers and children. Altogether, these findings are used to inform the design of emerging multimodal technological applications, that take advantage not only of vision but also of other sensory modalities. In the present work, we describe in detail one exemplary multisensory environment design based on the questionnaire results and design ideas from the workshops: the Space Shapes game, which exploits visual and haptic/proprioceptive sensory information to support mental rotation, 2D–3D transformation and percentages. Corroborating research evidence in neuroscience and pedagogy, our work presents a functional approach to develop novel multimodal user interfaces to improve education in the classroom
Primary Schoolers' Response to a Multisensory Serious Game on Cartesian Plane Coordinates in Immersive Virtual Reality
No full textThe Cartesian coordinate system is a fundamental concept for mathematics and science and poses a teaching challenge at primary school level. Learning the Cartesian coordinate system has the potential to promote numerical cognition through number-space associations, as well as core geometric concepts, including isometric transformations, symmetry, and shape perception. Immersive virtual reality (VR) facilitates embodied forms of teaching and learning mathematics through whole-body sensorimotor interaction and offers benefits as a platform to learn the Cartesian coordinate system compared with "real world"classroom activities. Our goal was to validate the Cartesian-Garden, a serious game designed to provide an educationally robust but engaging vehicle to teach these concepts in primary-level mathematics in a multisensory VR environment. In the game, the child explores a Cartesian-Garden, that is, a field of flowers in which each flower corresponds to x and y coordinates. Specifically, we tested whether exploring numbers spatially represented improved spatial and numerical skills independently from the use of VR. Children (n = 49; age 7-11 years old) were divided into experimental and age-matched control groups. The experimental group explored the Cartesian-Garden and picked flowers corresponding to target coordinates; the control group played a VR game unrelated to Cartesian coordinates. To quantify potential improvements, children were tested before and after training with perceptual tests investigating number line and spatial thinking. The results point toward differential age-related improvements depending on the tested concept, especially for the number line. This study provides the guidelines for the successful use of the Cartesian-Garden game, beneficial for specific age groups
From science to technology: Orientation and mobility in blind children and adults
No full textThe last quarter of a century has seen a dramatic rise of interest in the development of technological solutions for visually impaired people. However, despite the presence of many devices, user acceptance is low. Not only are visually impaired adults not using these devices but they are also too complex for children. The majority of these devices have been developed without considering either the brain mechanisms underlying the deficit or the natural ability of the brain to process information. Most of them use complex feedback systems and overwhelm sensory, attentional and memory capacities. Here we review the neuroscientific studies on orientation and mobility in visually impaired adults and children and present the technological devices developed so far to improve locomotion skills. We also discuss how we think these solutions could be improved. We hope that this paper may be of interest to neuroscientists and technologists and it will provide a common background to develop new science-driven technology, more accepted by visually impaired adults and suitable for children with visual disabilities
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