Visual Discrimination Training Increases the Rate and Anticipates Stimuli Processing
Description
Behavioral responses during discrimination learning of Kanji stimuli We evaluated whether increasing levels of perceptual expert-like performance throughout discrimination training, shapes the onset and rate of stimuli processing, by assessing the sensitivity with brief stimulus duration across four levels of discrimination training. Participants developed perceptual expertise throughout six Kanji discrimination training sessions (2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9), with a same-different task. The impact of discrimination training on performance in the few milliseconds after stimulus onset was evaluated in four interspersed evaluation sessions (1, 4, 7, 10). We anticipated that greater expert-like performance would result in a faster rate of and an earlier stimulus processing. We provide behavioral evidence for the modulation of stimulus processing during the first milliseconds after stimulus onset while participants developed perceptual expertise. There was a gradual increase in sensitivity with increasing training and longer exposure duration. The effect of training on performance varied with exposure duration. Modeling of the sensitivity data with increasing amounts of training and exposure duration suggest a faster rate and an earlier onset of stimulus processing. This data suggest that perceptual expertise speeds up the stimulus processing and anticipates the availability of information for coding. sessions (eval) 01, 04, 07, 10 are perceptual evaluation sessions with different stimulus durations item trial stim1dur stimulus duration (s) cond same or different pair E1 E2 Stimulus 1, 2 id sideE2 Stimulus 2 rotation M1 mask id resp Participant response rt Response time Sessions ( tra) 02, 03, 05, 06, 08, 09 are discrimination training sessions with 100 ms stimulus duration item trial cond same or different pair E1 E2 E3 Stimulus 1 and 2 ids stimulus 2 is a perceptual mask sideE3 Stimulus 3 rotation M1 M2 M3 masks 1, 2, 3 ids resp Participant response rt Response time rh right hand button for same response lh left hand button for same response