Bimodal Perception in Infancy: Response to Auditory-Visual Incongruity.

Assimilation of an auditory-visual stimulus configuration was tested in 32 infants aged 15-16 weeks. In the experimental group, infants were familiarized with a sounding object then presented laterally with the familiar sound paired with either the familiar or a novel object. A control group viewed the same presentation with no auditory component beyond a short cue sound on the lateral trials. When presented with the mismatched sound and object, infants in the experimental group looked away from the object more often and failed to orient toward the object more frequently than when presented with the matched sound and object. Infants in the control group viewing identical but silent objects did not show these differences. The infants discrimination of matched and mismatched auditory-visual stimuli indicates that infants by 4 months of age are capable of constructing bimodal schemata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]