Visual information influences speech perception in both infants and adults. It is still unknown whether lexical representations are multisensory. To address this question, we exposed 18-month-old infants (n = 32) and adults (n = 32) to new word-object pairings: Participants either heard the acoustic form of the words or saw the talking face in…

Human neonates prefer listening to speech compared to many nonspeech sounds, suggesting that humans are born with a bias for speech. However, neonates' preference may derive from properties of speech that are not unique but instead are shared with the vocalizations of other species. To test this, thirty neonates and sixteen 3-month-olds were…

Neonates prefer human speech to other nonlinguistic auditory stimuli. However, it remains an open question whether there are any conceptual consequences of words on object categorization in infants younger than 6 months. The current study examined the influence of words and tones on object categorization in forty-six 3- to 4-month-old infants.…

Infants, preschoolers, and adults were tested to determine the shortest time interval at which they would respond to the precedence effect, an auditory phenomenon produced by presenting the same sound through two loudspeakers with the input to one loudspeaker delayed in relation to the other. Results revealed developmental differences in threshold…

Preschool children's evaluation and integration of visual and auditory information in speech perception was compared with that of adults. Results were used to test current views of the development of perceptual categorization and speech perception. (Author/RH)

Eleven infants with Down's syndrome and 10 of 11 nonhandicapped infants operated an automatic device which enabled them to choose to listen to nursery rhymes sung or played on musical instruments. Both groups preferred the singing, and the Down's Syndrome infants had much longer response durations for the more complex auditory stimuli. (Author/DB)

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that the importance of linguistic labels for young children's conceptual organization stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input over visual input. Findings indicated that when auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli,…

Presented five- and eight-month olds with silent moving and static video images of self, peer, and doll, and sounds of self and nonsocial objects. Found that recognition of one's image develops through experience with dynamic facial stimulation during first eight months. By five months, infants treat their faces and voices as familiar and social…

Compares the effects of audio and audiovisual presentation on young children's cognitive processing while explicitly controlling the amount and complexity of information. (HOD)

Visual and auditory processing of complex sentences was examined among 8- through 11-year-olds. Findings suggested a U-shaped learning pattern for on-line processing of restrictive relative clauses. Off-line accuracy scores showed different patterns for good and poor comprehenders. Incorrect local attachment strategy use was related to sentence…

Compared the processing of rapid auditory stimuli on two-tone auditory discrimination tasks by 7- to 11-year-olds with learning impairments (LI) and those without learning impairments (non-LI). Found that LI children committed more errors, but the effects of timing were comparable. Obtained same results with a sample of good and poor readers. Task…