title: Infant perception of audio-visual speech synchrony.
abstract: Three experiments investigated perception of audio-visual (A-V) speech synchrony in 4- to 10-month-old infants. Experiments 1 and 2 used a convergent-operations approach by habituating infants to an audiovisually synchronous syllable (Experiment 1) and then testing for detection of increasing degrees of A-V asynchrony (366, 500, and 666 ms) or by habituating infants to a detectably asynchronous syllable (666 ms; Experiment 2) and then testing for detection of decreasing degrees of asynchrony (500, 366, and 0 ms). Following habituation to the synchronous syllable, infants detected only the largest A-V asynchrony (0 ms vs. 666 ms), whereas following habituation to the asynchronous syllable, infants detected the largest asynchrony (666 ms vs. 0 ms) as well as a smaller one (666 ms vs. 366 ms). Experiment 3 investigated the underlying mechanism of A-V asynchrony detection and indicated that responsiveness was based on a sensitivity to stimulus-energy onsets rather than the dynamic correlation between acoustic and visible utterance attributes. These findings demonstrated that infant perception of A-V speech synchrony is subject to the effects of short-term experience and that it is driven by a low-level, domain-general mechanism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. lewkowic@fau.edu
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Lewkowicz
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*