Dataset for the study Multisensory spatial perception in visually impaired infants

Data from the study "Multisensory spatial perception in visually impaired infants". Data are in textual tab-delimited format.

Summary

Congenitally blind infants are not only deprived of visual input but also of visual influences on the intact senses. The important role that vision plays in the early development of multisensory spatial perception1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (e.g., in crossmodal calibration8, 9, 10 and in the formation of multisensory spatial representations of the body and the world1,2) raises the possibility that impairments in spatial perception are at the heart of the wide range of difficulties that visually impaired infants show across spatial,8, 9, 10, 11, 12 motor,13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and social domains.8,18,19 But investigations of early development are needed to clarify how visually impaired infants’ spatial hearing and touch support their emerging ability to make sense of their body and the outside world. We compared sighted (S) and severely visually impaired (SVI) infants’ responses to auditory and tactile stimuli presented on their hands. No statistically reliable differences in the direction or latency of responses to auditory stimuli emerged, but significant group differences emerged in responses to tactile and audiotactile stimuli. The visually impaired infants showed attenuated audiotactile spatial integration and interference, weighted more tactile than auditory cues when the two were presented in conflict, and showed a more limited influence of representations of the external layout of the body on tactile spatial perception.20 These findings uncover a distinct phenotype of multisensory spatial perception in early postnatal visual deprivation. Importantly, evidence of audiotactile spatial integration in visually impaired infants, albeit to a lesser degree than in sighted infants, signals the potential of multisensory rehabilitation methods in early development.

Orienting responses and reaction times (RT) are reported, based on the scoring of two independent naive raters,  for each trial of each subject, group (SVI/S), posture (Uncrossed/Crossed), and sensory condition (Tactile only, Auditory only, Audiotactile congruent, Audiotactile incongruent).

Trial is the trial number, condition is the sensory condition, audio and tactile respectively refer to the side of the stimulated hand, response_status reports if the response is defined or undefined, response modality reports if the modality used by subjects to respond/not to respond to stimuli (hand, eye, both hands, no motion), group is if the subject was a sighted (S) or a severely visually impaired (SVI) infant, age_mounth is the age expressed in months, RT_rater1, RT_rater 2 and RT are respectively the RT assigned by the two raters and the merge of the two estimations (for RTs, the mean), the same organization for response_side, and for response_modality (for those variables, when the estimation of the two raters did not agree, the merged classification was set to unknown, that is uncertain/undefined).

本数据集来自研究《视力障碍婴儿的多感官空间知觉（Multisensory spatial perception in visually impaired infants）》，数据采用文本制表符分隔格式存储。

先天性失明婴儿不仅丧失了视觉输入，同时也失去了视觉对其余完整感官的调控作用。视觉在多感官空间知觉（Multisensory spatial perception）的早期发育中发挥着关键作用[1-7]，例如在跨模态校准（crossmodal calibration）[8-10]以及身体与外界的多感官空间表征构建过程中[1,2]。这提示，空间知觉损伤或许是视力障碍婴儿在空间[8-12]、运动[13-17]与社会[8,18,19]等多个领域出现各类障碍的核心原因。但目前仍需针对早期发育开展研究，以明确视力障碍婴儿的空间听觉与触觉如何助力其逐步理解自身身体与外部世界。本研究对比了正常视力（Sighted, S）与重度视力障碍（Severely Visually Impaired, SVI）婴儿对手部呈现的听觉与触觉刺激的反应。针对听觉刺激的反应方向与反应时均未出现具有统计学意义的组间差异，但在触觉与听觉-触觉（audiotactile）刺激的反应中则存在显著的组间差异。视力障碍婴儿的听觉-触觉空间整合与干扰效应均有所减弱；当听觉与触觉线索出现冲突时，他们会更侧重触觉线索；且身体外部空间表征对其触觉空间知觉的影响也更为有限[20]。上述研究结果揭示了早期产后视觉剥夺环境下多感官空间知觉的独特表型。值得注意的是，尽管视力障碍婴儿的听觉-触觉空间整合程度低于正常视力婴儿，但其仍存在该整合效应的证据，这提示多感官康复方法在早期发育阶段具有应用潜力。

本数据集报告了定向反应与反应时（Reaction Time, RT）数据，所有数据均由两名独立的盲法评分员基于每位受试者的每一次试次进行评分，记录信息包括分组（SVI/S）、姿势（Uncrossed/Crossed，双手非交叉/交叉）以及感官条件（仅触觉、仅听觉、听觉-触觉一致、听觉-触觉冲突）。

各字段详细说明如下：Trial为试次编号；condition为感官条件；audio与tactile分别指代受刺激手的侧别；response_status用于记录反应是否有效（已定义/未定义）；response_modality用于记录受试者对刺激做出反应/未做出反应所采用的反应模态，可选值包括手部、眼部、双手、无动作；group用于标识受试者为正常视力（S）或重度视力障碍（SVI）婴儿；age_mounth为以月龄表示的受试者年龄；RT_rater1、RT_rater2与RT分别为两名评分员给出的反应时，以及二者的合并估计值（反应时取平均值）；response_side与response_modality字段的处理规则与此一致。注：对于上述变量，若两名评分员的评估结果不一致，则将合并分类设为unknown，即不确定/未定义。