The ontogeny of human multisensory object perception: A constructivist account

Abstract

This chapter argues that the development of the multisensory object concept is constructed gradually in infancy. Empirical findings that illustrate this point are drawn from three areas. One shows that infants' ability to perceive low-level audio-visual relations (e.g., intensity and synchrony) is present early in infancy and that the ability to perceive higher-level and arbitrary intersensory relations emerges later in infancy. The second shows that whereas young infants exhibit what seems like a peculiar ability to link the multisensory attributes of nonnative multisensory inputs because of their sensitivity to low-level perceptual cues, older infants no longer exhibit such broad perceptual tuning because of their selective experience with native-only multisensory inputs and their emerging sensitivity to higher-level multisensory cues. The final area of research reviewed concerns infant perception and learning of audio-visual sequences, suggesting that the ability to learn multisensory sequences undergoes major changes during infancy as well. Overall, the evidence reviewed not only provides support for both classic theoretical views of intersensory development - by showing that developmental differentiation and developmental integration drive the emergence of the multisensory object concept - but also demonstrates that a previously unacknowledged process, namely perceptual narrowing, also contributes to the emergence of the object concept.