What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to explore how multisensory statistical and reinforcement learning differ between adults and children during tasks of varying difficulty.

February 12, 2026Open Access

Neural and behavioural differences in multisensory statistical and reinforcement learning across development and task variants

Puntos clave

The aim is to explore how multisensory statistical and reinforcement learning differ between adults and children during tasks of varying difficulty.
Compared learning processes in adults and children using audio-visual and tactile-visual tasks.
Conducted a discriminative choice and match recognition learning task with statistical stimulus regularities.
Used neuroimaging to observe brain activity in relation to statistical surprise and reward prediction errors.
Applied computational modeling to evaluate learning strategies among age groups.
Accuracy improved and reaction times decreased over time in all groups.
Adults exhibited stronger learning effects compared to children, particularly in audio-visual tasks.
Neuroimaging revealed that statistical surprise influenced activity in specific brain regions, with differing patterns in children.
Reward prediction errors were consistent across age groups and task variants, but statistical learning showed developmental differences.

Resumen

The development and maturation of multisensory processing and integration depend on the brain’s ability to detect patterns and adjust behaviour based on feedback. However, the developmental dynamics of these mechanisms are not yet fully understood. This study examines neural and behavioural differences in multisensory statistical and reinforcement learning processes by comparing adults and children, and further investigates these processes across two learning tasks of varying difficulty in children. Using a discriminative choice and a match recognition multisensory associative learning task with embedded statistical stimulus regularities, 28 adults (19.0–30.9 years) and 2 groups of children (N = 28 and N = 29, 8.5–12.8 years) learned novel, non-linguistic associations of audio–visual or tactile–visual stimuli. Behaviourally, accuracy increased and reaction time decreased over time in all groups, and these learning effects were stronger in adults than in children and for audio–visual than for tactile–visual learning. Computational modelling revealed that adults employed more advanced learning strategies, with greater sensitivity to value differences, and more deterministic choice patterns. Behaviourally, reaction times were slower for more surprising trials across all groups. Neuroimaging showed that statistical surprise modulated activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, intraparietal sulcus, and anterior cingulate cortex, while reward prediction errors were linked to striatal, medial frontal, and hippocampal regions. Reward prediction errors were consistent between adults and children and between task variants, whereas neural surprise processing emerged only in the match recognition task and showed developmental differences, indicating immaturity in children’s ability to detect statistical regularities. These findings highlight the importance of task design when comparing learning differences across developmental groups and showcase how reinforcement and statistical learning can be studied in parallel.

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