Effect of correlated visual and tactual feedback on auditory pattern learning at different age levels

Abstract

The role of correlated visual and tactual information for the learning of a set of six simple auditory patterns, eight notes long, was studied in 144 Ss drawn from Grades I, IV and V, and IX of the public schools, as well as from a college population. The task proved too difficult at Grade I (chance-level performance on two measures of transfer to the auditory patterns alone, regardless of training condition); significant effects of condition appeared at Grade IX on one measure, with both visual and tactual training groups being superior to the auditory-alone control group on the other measure. For all groups combined tactual training was superior to both visual and auditory, this superiority emerging most clearly in the two oldest groups. These results indicate that the learning of auditory patterns of the type utilized is a fairly difficult task for children, and that they are not able until a later age to make effective use of correlated information in other modalities. Implications of the results for the problem of auditory pattern perception, and for the view of perceptual learning and development of Zaporozhets et al. are discussed.