Past research has demonstrated incidental learning of task-irrelevant visual and auditory stimuli. Motivated by the possibility of similar evidence in the tactile domain and potential applications in tactile speech communication systems, we investigated incidental categorization of vibrotactile stimuli through a visuomotor task of shape identification. Two experiments were conducted where participants were exposed to position-based or movement-based vibrotactile stimuli prior to performing a speeded response to one of two targets. The two experiments differed only in the particular sets of such stimuli employed. Unbeknownst to the participants, the vibrotactile stimuli and visual targets were initially correlated perfectly to facilitate the incidental learning of their associations, briefly uncorrelated to check the cost in reaction time, and correlated again to re-establish the initial association. Finally, participants were asked to predict visual targets from novel position-based and movement-based stimuli. The results from both experiments provided evidence of incidental categorization of vibrotactile stimuli. The percent-correct scores and sensitivity indices for the overt categorization of novel stimuli from both experiments were well above chance, indicating generalization of learning. And while both experiments showed an increase in reaction time when the association between vibrotactile stimuli and visual targets was disrupted, this reaction time cost was significant only for the stimuli used in the second experiment. Our finding of incidental categorization in the tactile domain has important implications for the effective acquisition of speech in tactile speech communication systems.

中文翻译：

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振动触觉刺激的附带分类


过去的研究表明，与任务无关的视觉和听觉刺激的偶然学习。受到触觉领域类似证据的可能性以及触觉语音通信系统中潜在应用的启发，我们通过形状识别的视觉运动任务研究了振动触觉刺激的偶然分类。进行了两项实验，参与者在对两个目标之一进行快速反应之前受到基于位置或基于运动的振动触觉刺激。这两个实验的不同之处仅在于所采用的特定刺激组。在参与者不知情的情况下，振动触觉刺激和视觉目标最初完全相关，以促进其关联的偶然学习，短暂地不相关以检查反应时间的成本，并再次相关以重新建立初始关联。最后，参与者被要求从新颖的基于位置和基于运动的刺激中预测视觉目标。这两个实验的结果提供了振动触觉刺激的偶然分类的证据。两个实验中新刺激的明显分类的正确率分数和敏感性指数远高于偶然性，表明学习的泛化。虽然两个实验都表明，当振动触觉刺激和视觉目标之间的关联被破坏时，反应时间会增加，但这种反应时间成本仅对第二个实验中使用的刺激才显着。我们在触觉领域中偶然分类的发现对于触觉语音通信系统中语音的有效获取具有重要意义。