Unimodal statistical learning produces multimodal object-like representations

Abstract
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Abstract

The concept of objects is fundamental to cognition and is defined by a consistent set of sensory properties and physical affordances. Although it is unknown how the abstract concept of an object emerges, most accounts assume that visual or haptic boundaries are crucial in this process. Here, we tested an alternative hypothesis that boundaries are not essential but simply reflect a more fundamental principle: consistent visual or haptic statistical properties. Using a novel visuo-haptic statistical learning paradigm, we familiarised participants with objects defined solely by across-scene statistics provided either visually or through physical interactions. We then tested them on both a visual familiarity and a haptic pulling task, thus measuring both within-modality learning and across-modality generalisation. Participants showed strong within-modality learning and 'zero-shot' across-modality generalisation which were highly correlated. Our results demonstrate that humans can segment scenes into objects, without any explicit boundary cues, using purely statistical information.

Data availability

The scripts for all of the analysis reported in the manuscript can be found here https://github.com/GaborLengyel/Visual-Haptic-Statistical-Learning. There is a README file that explains both where the data can be found (Open Science Framework https://osf.io/456qb/) and how to run the analysis.

Article and author information

Author details

Gábor Lengyel

Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

For correspondence
lengyel.gaabor@gmail.com

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1535-3250
Goda Žalalytė

Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0012-9950
Alexandros Pantelides

Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6234-6061
James Neilson Ingram

Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
József Fiser

Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

For correspondence
fiserj@ceu.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Máté Lengyel

Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

For correspondence
m.lengyel@eng.cam.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Daniel M Wolpert

Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

For correspondence
wolpert@eng.cam.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2011-2790

Funding

ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2016-COG/726090)

Máté Lengyel

Royal Society Noreen Murray Professorship in Neurobiolog (RP120142)

Daniel M Wolpert

EU-FP7 Marie Curie CIG (CIG 618918)

József Fiser

Wellcome Trust: New Investigator Award (095621/Z/11/Z)

Máté Lengyel

National Institutes of Health (NIH R21 HD088731)

József Fiser

Wellcome Trust: Senior Investigator Award (097803/Z/11/Z)

Daniel M Wolpert

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All participants gave informed consent. All experimental protocols were approved by the University of Cambridge Psychology Ethics Committee.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.