Tactile Training Improvement of Same-orientation but Not Different-orientation Discrimination

Abstract

Working memory is a limited-ability cognitive system that is the core of human cognition function. However, working memory ability can be improved through training of working memory tasks. Although recent tactile studies have focused on training of tactile spatial discrimination tasks which mainly depend on working memory to distinguish the difference, there is little study on what aspects of tactile working memory can be improved with the training of tactile discrimination tasks. To investigate this issue, we used a tactile orientation discrimination task as the training task of tactile working memory. A group of healthy subjects was recruited to perform consecutively this discrimination task for three sessions in three days. The results found that discrimination sensitivity increased significantly in the later stage of training, its false alarm rate decreased significantly in the early stage of training, and its hit rate remained unchanged. These findings suggest that recognition ability of the tactile orientation discrimination task could improve with consecutive training and that this improvement results from an increase in the number of correct responses to the same orientations, while the floor effect occurred in the task of distinguishing the different orientations.