ERIC Number: EJ1230002
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Oct
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
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Available Date: N/A
Do Cues from Multiple Modalities Support Quicker Learning in Primary Schoolchildren?
Kirkham, Natasha Z.; Rea, Michaela; Osborne, Tamsin; White, Hayely; Mareschal, Denis
Developmental Psychology, v55 n10 p2048-2059 Oct 2019
The current study investigates whether informative, mutually redundant audiovisual cues support better performance in a category learning paradigm. Research suggests that, under some conditions, redundant multisensory cues supports better learning, when compared with unisensory cues. This was examined systematically across two experiments. In Experiment 1, children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were allocated to 1 of the 3 "modality" conditions ("audio informative only," "visual informative only," and "audiovisual informative") and explicitly instructed to learn the category membership of individual exemplars, as determined by a threshold of correct responses. Unisensory or redundant multisensory cues determined category membership, depending on the learning condition. In addition to significant main effects of age group and condition, a significant interaction between age and sensory condition was found, with 5-year-olds performing better when presented with redundant multisensory cues compared to unisensory cues. Ten-year-olds performed better with auditory informative only cues, compared to visual informative only cues, or informative but redundant multisensory cues, with no significant difference between the latter two. In Experiment 2, the multisensory condition was presented to separate groups of 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds, examining explicit learning outcomes in the "audiovisual informative" condition. Results showed that children who reached threshold during training were faster, made fewer errors, and performed better during test trials. Learning appeared to be based on the visual informative cues. Findings are discussed in the context of age-related selective attention, suggesting that the value of providing multisensory informative cues to support real-world learning depends on age and instructional context.
Descriptors: Elementary School Students, Cues, Auditory Stimuli, Visual Stimuli, Multisensory Learning, Age Differences, Visual Learning, Aural Learning
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
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Author Affiliations: N/A