Abstract
BackgroundAlthough feedback on performance is generally thought to promote perceptual learning, the role and necessity of feedback remain unclear. We investigated the effect of providing varying amounts of positive feedback while listeners attempted to discriminate between three identical tones on learning frequency discrimination.Methodology/Principal FindingsUsing this novel procedure, the feedback was meaningless and random in relation to the listeners' responses, but the amount of feedback provided (or lack thereof) affected learning. We found that a group of listeners who received positive feedback on 10% of the trials improved their performance on the task (learned), while other groups provided either with excess (90%) or with no feedback did not learn. Superimposed on these group data, however, individual listeners showed other systematic changes of performance. In particular, those with lower non-verbal IQ who trained in the no feedback condition performed more poorly after training.Conclusions/SignificanceThis pattern of results cannot be accounted for by learning models that ascribe an external teacher role to feedback. We suggest, instead, that feedback is used to monitor performance on the task in relation to its perceived difficulty, and that listeners who learn without the benefit of feedback are adept at self-monitoring of performance, a trait that also supports better performance on non-verbal IQ tests. These results show that ‘perceptual’ learning is strongly influenced by top-down processes of motivation and intelligence.
Highlights
Practice may not ‘‘make perfect’’, but it can certainly improve skills and abilities, including the ability to detect or discriminate a variety of sensory stimuli, a process known as perceptual learning
In the study reported here we explored the effect of positive performance feedback on learning an impossible auditory frequency discrimination task
Feedback affects group performance We investigated perceptual learning on an auditory discrimination task using a novel design that allowed us to manipulate the amount of feedback independent of other aspects of the training task
Summary
Practice may not ‘‘make perfect’’, but it can certainly improve skills and abilities, including the ability to detect or discriminate a variety of sensory stimuli, a process known as perceptual learning. The success of learning without feedback appears to depend on the difficulty of the training task [17], with easy tasks enabling learning without feedback, more difficult tasks benefitting from feedback, and the most difficult tasks requiring feedback for learning. This explanation implicitly assumes that feedback, when used, is used in an immediate fashion on a trial-by-trial basis to correct the learning mechanism, and is supported by findings that learning did not occur when the feedback was uncorrelated with the participants’ responses [10]. We investigated the effect of providing varying amounts of positive feedback while listeners attempted to discriminate between three identical tones on learning frequency discrimination
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