Intermodal perception and physical reasoning in young infants

The present research investigated 5.5-month-olds’ ability to (a) coordinate information from the tactile and visual modalities and (b) use their intermodal object representations to interpret physical events. Infants were tactilely presented with a ball that was either rigid or compressible. Following the tactile exploration trials, infants viewed a test event in which the ball moved back and forth through a tunnel. (Infants were given no information about the balls’ substance in the test event.) The circumference of the ball was either larger or smaller than the tunnel opening. The main results were that (a) when the ball was much larger than the tunnel opening, the infants correctly judged that the compressible, but not the rigid, ball could pass through the tunnel and (b) when the ball was much smaller than the tunnel opening, the infants correctly judged that both the compressible and the rigid ball could fit through the tunnel. Together, these results suggest that young infants are capable of using information about object substance encoded tactilely to interpret a passing-through event presented visually and were discussed, more generally, within the context of how intermodal object representations are formed and used to interpret physical events.

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