Auditory-visual transfer in four-month-old infants.
4-month-old infants were presented a 60-sec 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-sec 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 months.
D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D002666:Psychology, Child; D013998:Time Perception; D014163:Transfer, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception