![]() Unlike these higher-order forms of learning, however, perceptual learning involves improved sensitivity independent of cognitive, motor or other, non-perceptual factors. ![]() Other forms of learning, such as those that establish task rules, associations and strategies, can similarly affect performance. Training-induced improvements in performance on perceptual tasks do not, by themselves, imply perceptual learning. How is it different from other kinds of learning? Many theories and models of perceptual learning are directly in the tradition of signal detection theory, relating improvements in behavior to particular changes in how perceptual systems extract sensory-related signals from noise. It has been used effectively to describe how the brain overcomes noise from both the environment and its own internal processes to perceive sensory signals. ![]() Signal detection theory is a computational framework that describes how to extract a signal from noise, while accounting for biases and other factors that can influence the extraction process. Our understanding of the neural changes responsible for perceptual learning has benefitted greatly from the application of signal detection theory to perception. This idea has remained a dominant theme of perceptual learning since that time, with many studies designed to reveal the nature of the underlying neural changes. The improvements were assumed to be too dramatic and rapid to involve changes in the number of peripheral receptors and instead likely involved changes inside the nervous system. These improvements included a nearly 100-fold decrease in the distance between two points that could be distinguished when placed on a human subject’s back. Studies from over 150 years ago examined training-induced improvements in the ability to distinguish two points touched to the skin. Perceptual learning was among the earliest research topics in perceptual psychology.
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