An influential theoretical perspective describes an implicit category-learning system that associates regions of perceptual space with response outputs by integrating information preattentionally and predecisionally across multiple stimulus dimensions. This study tested whether this kind of implicit, information-integration category learning is possible across stimulus dimensions lying in different sensory modalities. Humans learned categories composed of conjoint visual-auditory category exemplars comprising a visual component (rectangles varying in the density of contained lit pixels) and an auditory component (Experiment 1: auditory sequences varying in duration; Experiment 2: pure tones varying in pitch). The categories had either a one-dimensional, rule-based solution or a two-dimensional, information-integration solution. Humans can solve the information-integration category tasks by integrating information across two stimulus modalities. The results demonstrate an important cross-modal form of sensory integration in the service of category learning, and they advance the field’s knowledge about the sensory organization of systems for categorization.
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