This study aimed to investigate whether stimulus modality influenced the acquisition and use of the rule-based strategy and the similarity-based strategy in category learning and whether the use of the two strategies was supported by shared or separate neural substrates. To address these issues, we combined behavioral and fNIRS methods in a modified prototype distortion task in which each category member has one rule feature and ten similarity features, and each type of feature can be presented in either the visual modality or the auditory modality. The results in Experiment 1 revealed that the learning effect in the "auditory rule-visual similarity" condition was the highest among all four conditions; further analysis revealed that in the "auditory rule-visual similarity" condition, the number of participants who used the rule-based strategy was more than the number of participants who used the similarity-based strategy, and the learning effect was always much higher for the rule-based strategy than for the similarity-based strategy. The behavioral results in Experiment 2 replicated the main findings in Experiment 1, and the fNIRS results showed that the use of the visual rule-based strategy was mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whereas the use of the auditory similarity-based strategy mainly engaged in the superior temporal gyrus, and the use of the visual similarity-based strategy mainly engaged in the inferior temporal gyrus. The results in Experiment 3 revealed that when the stimuli had only one type of feature, the visual rule rather than the auditory rule was learned more easily. The results provide new evidence that the stimulus modality can influence the acquisition and use of the rule-based strategy and the similarity-based strategy in category learning and that the use of the two types of strategies is supported by separate neural substrates both in the auditory modality and the visual modality.

中文翻译：

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刺激方式会影响类别学习中基于规则的策略和基于相似度的策略的获取和使用。

这项研究旨在调查刺激方式是否影响类别学习中基于规则的策略和基于相似度的策略的获取和使用，以及这两种策略的使用是否受共享或独立的神经底物支持。为了解决这些问题，我们在改进的原型失真任务中将行为和fNIRS方法相结合，其中每个类别成员具有一个规则特征和十个相似特征，并且每种类型的特征都可以以视觉方式或听觉方式呈现。实验1的结果表明，在“听觉规则-视觉相似性”条件下的学习效果在所有四个条件中最高；在“听觉规则-视觉相似性”条件下，学习效果最高。进一步的分析表明，在“听觉规则-视觉相似性”条件下，使用基于规则的策略的参与者的数量大于使用基于相似性的策略的参与者的数量，并且基于规则的策略的学习效果始终比基于相似性的策略更高。实验2中的行为结果重复了实验1中的主要发现，fNIRS结果表明，基于视觉规则的策略是由背外侧前额叶皮层介导的，而基于听觉相似性的策略主要是通过颞上回，以及基于视觉相似度的策略的使用主要涉及颞下回。实验3的结果表明，当刺激仅具有一种类型的特征时，视觉规则而非听觉规则更容易学习。