Abstract The current study utilized eye-tracking to investigate the effects of intersensory redundancy and language on infant visual attention and detection of a change in prosody in audiovisual speech. Twelve-month-old monolingual English-learning infants viewed either synchronous (redundant) or asynchronous (non-redundant) presentations of a woman speaking in native or non-native speech. Halfway through each trial, the speaker changed prosody from infant-directed speech (IDS) to adult-directed speech (ADS) or vice versa. Infants focused more on the mouth of the speaker on IDS trials compared to ADS trials regardless of language or intersensory redundancy. Additionally, infants demonstrated greater detection of prosody changes from IDS speech to ADS speech in native speech. Planned comparisons indicated that infants detected prosody changes across a broader range of conditions during redundant stimulus presentations. These findings shed light on the influence of language and prosody on infant attention and highlight the complexity of audiovisual speech processing in infancy.
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The effects of stimulus symmetry on hierarchical processing in infancy
The current study investigated the effects of stimulus symmetry on the processing of global and local stimulus properties by 6‐month‐old short‐ and long‐looking infants through the use of event‐related potentials (ERPs). Previous research has shown that individual differences in infant visual attention are related to hierarchical stimulus processing, such that short lookers show a global processing bias, while long lookers demonstrate a local processing bias (Guy, Reynolds, & Zhang, 2013). Additional research has shown that in comparison with asymmetry, symmetry is associated with more efficient stimulus processing and more accurate memory for stimulus configuration (Attneave, 1955; Perkins, 1932). In the current study, we utilized symmetric and asymmetric hierarchical stimuli and predicted that the presence of asymmetry would direct infant attention to the local features of stimuli, leading short lookers to regress to a local processing strategy. Results of the ERP analysis showed that infants familiarized with a symmetric stimulus showed evidence of global processing, while infants familiarized with an asymmetric stimulus did not demonstrate evidence of processing at the global or local level. These findings indicate that short‐ and long‐looking infants, who might otherwise fail to process global stimulus properties due to limited visual scanning, may succeed at global processing when exposed to symmetric stimuli. Furthermore, stimulus symmetry may recruit selective attention toward global properties of visual stimuli, facilitating higher‐level cognitive processing in infancy.
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10035188
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Psychobiology
- Volume:
- 59
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0012-1630
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 279-290
- Size(s):
- p. 279-290
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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