Categories are fundamental to everyday life and the ability to learn new categories is relevant across the lifespan. Categories are ubiquitous across modalities, supporting complex processes such as object recognition and speech perception. Prior work has proposed that different categories may engage learning systems with unique developmental…

The ability to decode atypical and degraded speech signals as intelligible is a hallmark of speech perception. Human adults can perceive sounds as speech even when they are generated by a variety of nonhuman sources including computers and parrots. We examined how infants perceive the speech-like vocalizations of a parrot. Further, we examined how…

Examined rate-based intersensory matching in infants by habituating them to concordant or discordant auditory-visual stimuli. Found a preference for the visual stimulus that moved at a novel velocity, indicating that the temporal attributes of the visual component dominated responsiveness. Found only limited evidence of intersensory matching. (WP)

Infants looked at visual displays of two or three items while listening to auditory sequences of two or three sounds. When the rate and duration of sounds were constant, infants looked longer at the visual display that was numerically equivalent to the auditory sequence. When the rate and duration of sounds varied, infants showed no preference for…

Describes two studies in which young children were shown pictures that represented sound with postures and contexts, with conventions, and with combinations of information. Shows that the different types of pictorial representation of sound were not equivalent in their ability to evoke a correct interpretation. (HOD)