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.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD025669-06
Application #
2403189
Study Section
Human Development and Aging Subcommittee 3 (HUD)
Project Start
1995-12-01
Project End
2000-08-31
Budget Start
1997-09-01
Budget End
1998-08-31
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Florida International University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
071298814
City
Miami
State
FL
Country
United States
Zip Code
33199
Gogate, Lakshmi; Maganti, Madhavilatha; Bahrick, Lorraine E (2015) Cross-cultural evidence for multimodal motherese: Asian Indian mothers' adaptive use of synchronous words and gestures. J Exp Child Psychol 129:110-26
Flom, Ross; Bahrick, Lorraine E (2007) The development of infant discrimination of affect in multimodal and unimodal stimulation: The role of intersensory redundancy. Dev Psychol 43:238-52
Bahrick, Lorraine E; Hernandez-Reif, Maria; Flom, Ross (2005) The development of infant learning about specific face-voice relations. Dev Psychol 41:541-52
Bahrick, Lorraine E (2002) Generalization of learning in three-and-a-half-month-old infants on the basis of amodal relations. Child Dev 73:667-81
Bahrick, Lorraine E; Flom, Ross; Lickliter, Robert (2002) Intersensory redundancy facilitates discrimination of tempo in 3-month-old infants. Dev Psychobiol 41:352-63
Bahrick, Lorraine E; Gogate, Lakshmi J; Ruiz, Ivonne (2002) Attention and memory for faces and actions in infancy: the salience of actions over faces in dynamic events. Child Dev 73:1629-43
Bahrick, L E (2001) Increasing specificity in perceptual development: infants' detection of nested levels of multimodal stimulation. J Exp Child Psychol 79:253-70
Lickliter, R; Bahrick, L E (2000) The development of infant intersensory perception: advantages of a comparative convergent-operations approach. Psychol Bull 126:260-80
Gogate, L J; Bahrick, L E; Watson, J D (2000) A study of multimodal motherese: the role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures. Child Dev 71:878-94
Bahrick, L E; Lickliter, R (2000) Intersensory redundancy guides attentional selectivity and perceptual learning in infancy. Dev Psychol 36:190-201

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