Infant discrimination of faces: Predictions from the intersensory redundancy hypothesis
Poster

Lorraine Bahrick
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Robert Lickliter
Department of Psychology

Marianna Vaillant
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Laura Batista
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Melissa Shuman
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Irina Castellanos
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

     Abstract ID Number: 87
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 20, 2003

Abstract
Bahrick and Lickliter (2000,2002) proposed an intersensory redundancy hypothesis which holds that, in early development, experiencing an event redundantly across two senses facilitates perception of amodal properties (e.g., synchrony, tempo, rhythm) whereas experiencing an event in one sense modality alone facilitates perception of modality specific aspects of stimuation (e.g., pitch, color, pattern). Therefore discrimination of faces (modality specific information) should be enhanced when the faces are presented visually and attenuated when they are presented audiovisually (where amodal properties are attended). Twenty-four 2-month-old infants were habituated to videos of a women speaking under either a visual or an audiovisual condition. Test trials depicted a novel women speaking. Results supported our prediction and demonstrated significant discrimination (measured by visual recovery to the novel face) in the unimodal visual, but not the bimodal audiovisual condition. Performance in the unimodal visual condition was significantly greater than in the bimodal condition. These findings converge with those of our prior studies of voice perception and demonstrate that early in development, infants attend to different properties of events as a function of whether the stimulation is multimodal or unimodal.