Learning and discrimination of audiovisual events in human infants: the hierarchical relation between intersensory temporal synchrony and rhythmic pattern cues

Dev Psychol. 2003 Sep;39(5):795-804. doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.39.5.795.

Abstract

This study examined 4- to 10-month-old infants' perception of audio-visual (A-V) temporal synchrony cues in the presence or absence of rhythmic pattern cues. Experiment 1 established that infants of all ages could successfully discriminate between two different audiovisual rhythmic events. Experiment 2 showed that only 10-month-old infants detected a desynchronization of the auditory and visual components of a rhythmical event. Experiment 3 showed that 4- to 8-month-old infants could detect A-V desynchronization but only when the audiovisual event was nonrhythmic. These results show that initially in development infants attend to the overall temporal structure of rhythmic audiovisual events but that later in development they become capable of perceiving the embedded intersensory temporal synchrony relations as well.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Association Learning*
  • Attention
  • Auditory Perception*
  • Child Development
  • Color Perception
  • Cues
  • Discrimination Learning*
  • Female
  • Habituation, Psychophysiologic
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Male
  • Motion Perception
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Phonetics
  • Psychology, Child*
  • Speech Perception
  • Time Perception*
  • Visual Perception*