Infants Can Perceive Intersensory Rhythm Equivalence
Poster Presentation

David Lewkowicz
Florida Atlantic University

     Abstract ID Number: 106
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 21, 2005

Abstract
Lewkowicz (2000) proposed a model of the development of temporally based intersensory perception in infancy. The model assumed that intersensory perception of rhythmic pattern equivalence emerges sometime in infancy. To test this possibility, groups of 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-month-old infants were habituated either to one of two audible rhythmic patterns (2-1-3 or 2-3-1) or one of two visible rhythmic patterns and then tested with the familiar and novel patterns in the other modality. Regardless of age, infants responded more to the novel than to the familiar rhythmic pattern in the other modality, indicating that they perceived pattern equivalence across modalities. Interestingly, they only did so following auditory learning, indicating that the developmental emergence of intersensory perception of rhythmic pattern information is driven by the auditory modality’s early specialization for the processing of temporal information. The current findings are consistent with other evidence that newborn infants are sensitive to the rhythmical structure of their native language and that older infants can perceive audio-visual synchrony, duration, and tempo relations. They suggest that infants can generalize learning of auditory rhythmical information to other sensory modalities and that this may reflect the emergence of domain-general pattern perception skills early in life.