Auditory-Visual Transfer in Four-Month-Old Infants

Abstract
Four-month-old infants were presented a 60 s recording of a syllable repeated in either a regular or an irregular rhythm. The rhythms contained the same time intervals, but the pattern of the intervals differed. Following the sound, the infants were shown a 90 s silent film of a puppet opening and closing its mouth, either in the familiar rhythm or in a novel rhythm. Infants receiving the regular sound watched the film more than infants receiving the irregular sound, a finding that was explained in terms of a transmodal positive contrast effect. More important, infants who saw the puppet move in a novel rhythm watched the film longer (measured in total looking and mean look) than infants who saw it move in a familiar rhythm. This is the first demonstration of auditory-visual transfer of temporal information in infants as young as 4 mo.

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