Development of the multisensory perception of water in infancy

Abstract

Material perception is facilitated by multisensory interactions that enable us to associate the visual properties of a material with its auditory properties. Such interactions develop during infancy and are assumed to depend on the familiarity of materials. Here, we aimed to pinpoint the age at which infants acquire multisensory interactions for the perception of water, which is a familiar material to them. We presented two side-by-side movies of pouring water and ice while providing the corresponding sounds of water and ice, as well as silence. We found that infants older than 5 months of age looked longer at the water movie when they heard the sound of water. Conversely, they did not look at the ice movie when they heard the sound of ice. These results indicate that at approximately 5 months of age, infants develop multisensory interactions between auditory and visual properties of water, but not of ice. The contrasting results between water and ice suggest that the development of multisensory material perception depends on the frequency of interactions with materials during infancy.