Withstanding the test of time: Multisensory cues improve the delayed retention of incidental learning

Abstract

Multisensory tools are commonly employed within educational settings (e.g. Carter & Stephenson, ), and there is a growing body of literature advocating the benefits of presenting children with multisensory information over unisensory cues for learning (Baker & Jordan, ; Jordan & Baker, ). This is even the case when the informative cues are only arbitrarily related (Broadbent, White, Mareschal, & Kirkham, ). However, the delayed retention of learning following exposure to multisensory compared to unisensory cues has not been evaluated, and has important implications for the utility of multisensory educational tools. This study examined the retention of incidental categorical learning in 5-, 7- and 9-year-olds (N = 181) using either unisensory or multisensory cues. Results found significantly greater retention of learning following multisensory cue exposure than with unisensory information when category knowledge was tested following a 24-hour period of delay. No age-related changes were found, suggesting that multisensory information can facilitate the retention of learning across this age range.

To Move or Not to Move: Development of Fine-Tuning of Object Motion in Haptic Exploration

“…The role of vision might have been particularly important for the type of exercises we selected in the current study, since vision is more precise than haptics when it comes to detecting stimulus properties such as the spatial configuration of colored pins we proposed [19]. Different tasks focusing on alternative features of haptic stimulias e.g., compressibilityhave shown haptic dominance, also in the age range tested here [20] Additionally, the observation that participants exerted a number of long and short touches also in the Visuo-Haptic condition might suggest that they performed some active haptic exploration in support of visual inspection. The analysis of the pin configuration, or at least of their number, could entail an estimate of dot-density, that can be efficiently performed also haptically [21].…”

The development of attentional control mechanisms in multisensory environments

“…Other processes, related to perceptual judgements or sensorimotor skills mature slowly (8 and 10–11 years, Gori et al, 2008 , 2012 ; and Barutchu et al, 2009 , respectively). At the same time, the benefits of the multisensory nature of information for learning have been reported already at 5 years ( Broadbent et al, 2018 , 2019 ). Yet, existing research offers no insights as to whether children are more or less sensitive than adults to multisensory distraction.…”

The development of attentional control mechanisms in multisensory environments

“…Other processes, related to perceptual judgements or sensorimotor skills mature slowly (8 and 10-11 years, Gori et al 2008, 2012; and Barutchu et al 2009, respectively). At the same time, the benefits of the multisensory nature of information for learning have been reported already at 5 years (Broadbent et al 2018, 2019). Yet, existing research offers no insights as to whether children are more or less sensitive than adults to multisensory distraction.…”

“…Other processes related to perceptual estimation or sensorimotor skills seem to mature slowly (8 and 10-11 years, Gori et al 2008Gori et al , 2012and Barutchu et al 2009, respectively). Yet, multisensory benefits for incidental learning have been reported in children as young as 5 (Broadbent et al 2018(Broadbent et al , 2019. As such, existing research offers no clear resolution on whether children are more sensitive to multisensory distraction than adults.…”