Although it has been demonstrated that multisensory information can facilitate object recognition and object memory, it remains unclear whether such facilitation effect exists in category learning. To address this issue, comparable car images and sounds were first selected by a discrimination task in Experiment 1. Then, those selected images and sounds were utilized in a prototype category learning task in Experiments 2 and 3, in which participants were trained with auditory, visual, and audiovisual stimuli, and were tested with trained or untrained stimuli within the same categories presented alone or accompanied with a congruent or incongruent stimulus in the other modality. In Experiment 2, when low-distortion stimuli (more similar to the prototypes) were trained, there was higher accuracy for audiovisual trials than visual trials, but no significant difference between audiovisual and auditory trials. During testing, accuracy was significantly higher for congruent trials than unisensory or incongruent trials, and the congruency effect was larger for untrained high-distortion stimuli than trained low-distortion stimuli. In Experiment 3, when high-distortion stimuli (less similar to the prototypes) were trained, there was higher accuracy for audiovisual trials than visual or auditory trials, and the congruency effect was larger for trained high-distortion stimuli than untrained low-distortion stimuli during testing. These findings demonstrated that higher degree of stimuli distortion resulted in more robust multisensory effect, and the categorization of not only trained but also untrained stimuli in one modality could be influenced by an accompanying stimulus in the other modality.

尽管已经证明多感官信息可以促进对象识别和对象记忆，但尚不清楚类别学习中是否存在这种促进作用。为了解决这个问题，可比较的汽车图像和声音首先由实验 1 中的辨别任务选择。然后，这些选择的图像和声音被用于实验 2 和 3 的原型类别学习任务，其中参与者接受听觉训练，视觉和视听刺激，并在单独呈现的相同类别中使用受过训练或未经训练的刺激进行测试，或者在其他模式中伴随着一致或不一致的刺激。在实验 2 中，当训练低失真刺激（与原型更相似）时，视听试验的准确性高于视觉试验，但视听试验和听觉试验之间没有显着差异。在测试过程中，一致试验的准确性明显高于单感或不一致试验，并且未经训练的高失真刺激的一致性效应大于经过训练的低失真刺激。在实验 3 中，当训练高失真刺激（与原型不太相似）时，视听试验的准确度高于视觉或听觉试验，并且经过训练的高失真刺激的一致性效应比未经训练的低失真刺激更大在测试期间。这些发现表明，更高程度的刺激失真会导致更强大的多感官效应，