The primary goal of the proposed research is to further our understanding of the nature and basis of the development of intermodal learning and perception of audible and visible events in infancy. Prior research has focused primarily on identifying the intermodal capabilities of infants without examining the learning process itself or the origins and boundary conditions of these abilities. In the proposed research perception of both social and nonsocial events is investigated. Three levels of audio-visual relations that characterize the stimulation from single events have been delineated: 1) global - amodal temporal synchrony uniting the sights and sounds of an object's impact; 2) nested - amodal temporal relations specifying properties such as substance, composition, number, rhythm, and tempo; and 3) arbitrary specific relations between visual and acoustic properties such as pitch and color.

The proposed research will systematically investigate the intermodal learning and generalization of learning in young infants on the basis of three levels of audio-visual relations available in face-voice events and events depicting objects striking a surface. It will employ an habituation/training phase followed by tests of intermodal learning and generalization. Predictions consistent with a principle of increasing specificity are tested: 1) Young infants should not learn to relate incongruent sights and sounds when they are synchronous; 2) Even newborns may be sensitive to global amodal relations; 3) Learning about amodal relations precedes and constrains learning about arbitrary relations, both developmentally and within a given episode of exploration; 4) Familiarity with an event should speed up intermodal learning; and 5) Generalization of learning about amodal relations should occur earlier and be greater than generalization of arbitrary relations.

This research will provide the first systematic investigation of how intermodal learning and knowledge develops and how, once acquired in one context, it becomes flexibly extended to other contexts. The attainment of this sort of flexible rule-based knowledge is the essence of intelligent functioning. An understanding of this process will promote the development of norms for intermodal learning and generalization at various ages in infancy, which could contribute to the diagnosis of abnormal patterns of development.

R01HD025669

1990-09-01

2002-08-31