Infants experience language in rich multisensory environments. For example, they may first be exposed to the word applesauce while touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing applesauce. In three experiments using different methods we asked whether the number of distinct senses linked with the semantic features of objects would impact word recognition…

Most research on early language learning focuses on the objects that infants see and the words they hear in their daily lives, although growing evidence suggests that motor development is also closely tied to language development. To study the real-time behaviors required for learning new words during free-flowing toy play, we measured infants'…

Multisensory tools are commonly employed within educational settings (e.g. Carter & Stephenson, 2012), and there is a growing body of literature advocating the benefits of presenting children with multisensory information over unisensory cues for learning (Baker & Jordan, 2015; Jordan & Baker, 2011). This is even the case when the…

Multisensory information has been shown to modulate attention in infants and facilitate learning in adults, by enhancing the amodal properties of a stimulus. However, it remains unclear whether this translates to learning in a multisensory environment across middle childhood, and particularly in the case of incidental learning. One hundred and…

The present work investigates the development of bodily self-consciousness and its relation to multisensory bodily information, by measuring for the first time the development of responses to the full body illusion in childhood. We tested three age groups of children: 6- to 7-year-olds (n = 28); 8- to 9-year-olds (n = 21); 10- to 11-year-olds…