Early experience and multisensory perceptual narrowing.

Perceptual narrowing reflects the effects of early experience and contributes in key ways to perceptual and cognitive development. Previous studies have found that unisensory perceptual sensitivity in young infants is broadly tuned such that they can discriminate native as well as non-native sensory inputs but that it is more narrowly tuned in older infants such that they only respond to native inputs. Recently, my coworkers and I discovered that multisensory perceptual sensitivity narrows as well. The present article reviews this new evidence in the general context of multisensory perceptual development and the effects of early experience. Together, the evidence on unisensory and multisensory narrowing shows that early experience shapes the emergence of perceptual specialization and expertise.

[1]  James R. Patrick,et al.  Animal Drive and The Learning Process. , 1931 .

[2]  Heinz Werner,et al.  Comparative Psychology of Mental Development , 1942 .

[3]  T. A. Ryan.  Interrelations of sensory systems in perception. , 1940 .

[4]  L. Carmichael.  The onset and early development of behavior. , 1946 .

[5]  Norman R. F. Maier,et al.  Principles of animal psychology , 1952 .

[6]  D. Lehrman,et al.  A Critique of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinctive Behavior , 1953, The Quarterly Review of Biology.

[7]  W. H. Sumby,et al.  Visual contribution to speech intelligibility in noise , 1954 .

[8]  S. Counce.  The Strategy of the Genes , 1958, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[9]  H. L. Koch.  The relation of certain formal attributes of siblings to attitudes held toward each other and toward their parents , 1960 .

[10]  H. Birch,et al.  INTERSENSORY DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN. , 1963, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[11]  T. C. Schneirla.  Behavioral Development and Comparative Psychology , 1966, The Quarterly Review of Biology.

[12]  J. Gibson.  The Senses Considered As Perceptual Systems , 1967 .

[13]  E. Gibson.  Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development , 1969 .

[14]  D. Lehrman,et al.  Semantic and Conceptual Issues in the Nature-Nurture Problem , 1970 .

[15]  E. Gibson,et al.  Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development , 1973 .

[16]  G. Sacher,et al.  Relation of Gestation Time to Brain Weight for Placental Mammals: Implications for the Theory of Vertebrate Growth , 1974, The American Naturalist.

[17]  R M Bradley,et al.  Fetal sensory receptors. , 1975, Physiological reviews.

[18]  P. L. Adams.  THE ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE IN CHILDREN , 1976 .

[19]  Z. Kuo,et al.  The dynamics of behavior development : an epigenetic view , 1976 .

[20]  H. McGurk,et al.  Hearing lips and seeing voices , 1976, Nature.

[21]  M. Haith,et al.  Eye contact and face scanning in early infancy. , 1978, Science.

[22]  A. Gottfried,et al.  Cross-modal transfer in human infants. , 1977 .

[23]  L. Marks.  The Unity of the Senses , 1978 .

[24]  Q Summerfield,et al.  Use of Visual Information for Phonetic Perception , 1979, Phonetica.

[25]  Barbara Dodd,et al.  Lip reading in infants: Attention to speech presented in- and out-of-synchrony , 1979, Cognitive Psychology.

[26]  N. F. Dixon,et al.  The Detection of Auditory Visual Desynchrony , 1980, Perception.

[27]  David J. Lewkowicz,et al.  Cross-modal equivalence in early infancy: Auditory–visual intensity matching. , 1980 .

[28]  G Turkewitz,et al.  Intersensory interaction in newborns: modification of visual preferences following exposure to sound. , 1981, Child development.

[29]  G Turkewitz,et al.  Limitations on input as a basis for neural organization and perceptual development: a preliminary theoretical statement. , 1982, Developmental psychobiology.

[30]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  The bimodal perception of speech in infancy. , 1982, Science.

[31]  A. Walker,et al.  Intermodal perception of expressive behaviors by human infants. , 1982, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[32]  J. Werker,et al.  Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life , 1984 .

[33]  J. Fawcett,et al.  Regressive events in neurogenesis. , 1984, Science.

[34]  G. Turkewitz,et al.  The Role of Developmental Limitations of Sensory Input on Sensory/Perceptual Organization , 1985, Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP.

[35]  David J. Lewkowicz,et al.  Developmental changes in infants' bisensory response to synchronous durations☆ , 1986 .

[36]  A. Walker-Andrews.  Intermodal perception of expressive behaviors: Relation of eye and voice? , 1986 .

[37]  G Turkewitz,et al.  Effects of unusually early visual stimulation on the development of homing behavior in the rat pup. , 1986, Developmental psychobiology.

[38]  A. Decasper,et al.  Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns' perception of speech sounds , 1986 .

[39]  C. Blakemore,et al.  Developmental plasticity in the visual and auditory representations in the mammalian superior colliculus , 1988, Nature.

[40]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  A precursor of language acquisition in young infants , 1988, Cognition.

[41]  L. Bahrick,et al.  Intermodal learning in infancy: learning on the basis of two kinds of invariant relations in audible and visible events. , 1988, Child development.

[42]  B. de Boysson-Bardies,et al.  A crosslinguistic investigation of vowel formants in babbling , 1989, Journal of Child Language.

[43]  W. P. Smotherman,et al.  The Prenatal Origins of Behavioral Organization , 1990 .

[44]  Intersensory Functioning: Auditory-Visual Pattern Equivalence in Younger and Older Children. , 1990 .

[45]  E I Knudsen,et al.  Visual instruction of the neural map of auditory space in the developing optic tectum. , 1991, Science.

[46]  L. Bahrick,et al.  Infants' Bimodal Perception of Gender , 1991 .

[47]  Gilbert Gottlieb,et al.  Experiential canalization of behavioral development: results , 1991 .

[48]  Kathleen R. Gibson,et al.  Myelination and behavioral development: A comparative perspective on questions of neoteny, altriciality and intelligence. , 1991 .

[49]  G. Gottlieb.  Experiential Canalization of Behavioral Development: Theory. , 1991 .

[50]  P K Kuhl,et al.  Cross-modal speech perception in adults and infants using nonspeech auditory stimuli. , 1991, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[51]  R. Lickliter,et al.  Contextual determinants of auditory learning in bobwhite quail embryos and hatchlings. , 1992, Developmental psychobiology.

[52]  D. Lewkowicz.  Infants’ responsiveness to the auditory and visual attributes of a sounding/moving stimulus , 1992, Perception & psychophysics.

[53]  David J. Lewkowicz,et al.  Infants' response to temporally based intersensory equivalence: The effect of synchronous sounds on visual preferences for moving stimuli , 1992 .

[54]  K. Stevens,et al.  Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. , 1992, Science.

[55]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Infants' preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. , 1993, Child development.

[56]  T. Bower,et al.  Amodal representation of speech in infants , 1993 .

[57]  B. Stein,et al.  The Merging of the Senses , 1993 .

[58]  P. Jusczyk,et al.  Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. , 1994 .

[59]  David J. Lewkowicz,et al.  Development of intersensory perception in human infants. , 1994 .

[60]  D. Poulin-Dubois,et al.  Infants' Intermodal Knowledge about Gender. , 1994 .

[61]  J. Werker,et al.  Developmental changes in perception of nonnative vowel contrasts. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[62]  D. Lewkowicz.  Limitations on Infants' Response to Rate-Based Auditory-Visual Relations. , 1994 .

[63]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. , 2007, Journal of cognitive neuroscience.

[64]  Catherine T. Best,et al.  Divergent developmental patterns for infants' perception of two nonnative consonant contrasts , 1995 .

[65]  L E White,et al.  Is neural development Darwinian? , 1996, Trends in neurosciences.

[66]  D. Lewkowicz.  Perception of auditory-visual temporal synchrony in human infants. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[67]  J. A. Johnson,et al.  Point-light facial displays enhance comprehension of speech in noise. , 1996, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[68]  Josef P. Rauschecker,et al.  The Development of Intersensory Perception: Comparative Perspectives , 1996, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[69]  A. Meltzoff,et al.  Infant vocalizations in response to speech: vocal imitation and developmental change. , 1996, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[70]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Intersensory experience and early perceptual development: the role of spatial contiguity in Bobwhite quail chicks' responsiveness to multimodal maternal cues. , 1996, Developmental psychobiology.

[71]  Intermodal perception at birth: newborn infants' memory for arbitrary auditory–visual pairings , 1997 .

[72]  M T Wallace,et al.  Development of Multisensory Neurons and Multisensory Integration in Cat Superior Colliculus , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[73]  A. Walker-Andrews.  Infants' perception of expressive behaviors: differentiation of multimodal information. , 1997, Psychological bulletin.

[74]  T. Sejnowski,et al.  Irresistible environment meets immovable neurons , 1997, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[75]  R. Näätänen,et al.  Development of language-specific phoneme representations in the infant brain , 1998, Nature Neuroscience.

[76]  J. Mehler,et al.  Language discrimination by newborns: toward an understanding of the role of rhythm. , 1998, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[77]  G Gottlieb,et al.  Normally occurring environmental and behavioral influences on gene activity: from central dogma to probabilistic epigenesis. , 1998, Psychological review.

[78]  J. Flege.  Age of learning and second language speech. , 1999 .

[79]  J. Werker,et al.  Matching phonetic information in lips and voice is robust in 4.5-month-old infants , 1999 .

[80]  Alan Slater,et al.  Intermodal perception at birth: Intersensory redundancy guides newborn infants’ learning of arbitrary auditory−visual pairings , 1999 .

[81]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The development of intersensory temporal perception: an epigenetic systems/limitations view. , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[82]  R. Lickliter,et al.  Intersensory redundancy guides attentional selectivity and perceptual learning in infancy. , 2000, Developmental psychology.

[83]  Alessandra Angelucci,et al.  Induction of visual orientation modules in auditory cortex , 2000, Nature.

[84]  Elizabeth K. Johnson,et al.  Language Discrimination by English-Learning 5-Month-Olds: Effects of Rhythm and Familiarity , 2000 .

[85]  Daniel O. Jackson,et al.  Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis , 2000 .

[86]  R. Lickliter,et al.  The development of infant intersensory perception: advantages of a comparative convergent-operations approach. , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[87]  M. Sur,et al.  Visual behaviour mediated by retinal projections directed to the auditory pathway , 2000, Nature.

[88]  M T Wallace,et al.  Onset of cross-modal synthesis in the neonatal superior colliculus is gated by the development of cortical influences. , 2000, Journal of neurophysiology.

[89]  D. Lewkowicz.  Infants' perception of the audible, visible, and bimodal attributes of multimodal syllables. , 2000, Child development.

[90]  M. Wallace,et al.  Sensory and Multisensory Responses in the Newborn Monkey Superior Colliculus , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[91]  J. Colombo.  The development of visual attention in infancy. , 2001, Annual review of psychology.

[92]  A. Walker-Andrews,et al.  The role of person familiarity in young infants' perception of emotional expressions. , 2001, Child development.

[93]  D. Bavelier,et al.  Cross-modal plasticity: where and how? , 2002, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[94]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Is Face Processing Species-Specific During the First Year of Life? , 2002, Science.

[95]  J. Werker,et al.  Infants' ability to match dynamic phonetic and gender information in the face and voice. , 2002, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[96]  J. Werker,et al.  Two-month-old infants match phonetic information in lips and voice , 2003 .

[97]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[98]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Sound induces perceptual reorganization of an ambiguous motion display in human infants , 2003 .

[99]  N. Logothetis,et al.  Neuroperception: Facial expressions linked to monkey calls , 2003, Nature.

[100]  S. Hunnius,et al.  Developmental Changes in Visual Scanning of Dynamic Faces and Abstract Stimuli in Infants: A Longitudinal Study. , 2004, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[101]  S. Kojima,et al.  Matching vocalizations to vocalizing faces in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) , 2004, Animal Cognition.

[102]  S. de Schonen,et al.  Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. , 2004, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[103]  F. Simion,et al.  Can a Nonspecific Bias Toward Top-Heavy Patterns Explain Newborns' Face Preference? , 2004, Psychological science.

[104]  Lisa A. Parr,et al.  Perceptual biases for multimodal cues in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) affect recognition , 2004, Animal Cognition.

[105]  P. Hallé,et al.  The role of accentual pattern in early lexical representation , 2004 .

[106]  S. Trehub,et al.  Tuning in to musical rhythms: infants learn more readily than adults. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[107]  F. Sai,et al.  The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth , 2005 .

[108]  S. Trehub,et al.  Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood , 2005, Psychological science.

[109]  Amir Amedi,et al.  The Occipital Cortex in the Blind , 2005 .

[110]  L. Bahrick,et al.  The development of infant learning about specific face-voice relations. , 2005, Developmental psychology.

[111]  Elizabeth M. Brannon,et al.  Monkeys Match the Number of Voices They Hear to the Number of Faces They See , 2005, Current Biology.

[112]  Benoist Schaal,et al.  Human newborns prefer human milk: conspecific milk odor is attractive without postnatal exposure. , 2005, Child development.

[113]  C. Pallier,et al.  Reversibility of the Other-Race Effect in Face Recognition During Childhood , 2005, Psychological science.

[114]  D. Swingley,et al.  11-month-olds' knowledge of how familiar words sound. , 2005, Developmental science.

[115]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Plasticity of face processing in infancy. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[116]  J. Werker,et al.  Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain. , 2005, Developmental psychobiology.

[117]  Virginie van Wassenhove,et al.  Auditory-visual fusion in speech perception in children with cochlear implants. , 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[118]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The decline of cross-species intersensory perception in human infants. , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[119]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months. , 2006, Developmental science.

[120]  T. Matsuzawa,et al.  Japanese macaques form a cross-modal representation of their own species in their first year of life , 2006, Primates.

[121]  Linda Polka,et al.  Language-experience facilitates discrimination of /d- / in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of English , 2006, Cognition.

[122]  Hwai-Jong Cheng,et al.  Axon pruning: an essential step underlying the developmental plasticity of neuronal connections , 2006, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[123]  R. Saunders,et al.  Longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging study of rhesus monkey brain development , 2006, The European journal of neuroscience.

[124]  Shinsuke Shimojo,et al.  Development of multisensory spatial integration and perception in humans. , 2006, Developmental science.

[125]  R. Lickliter,et al.  Prenatal exposure to temporal and spatial stimulus properties affects postnatal responsiveness to spatial contiguity in bobwhite quail chicks. , 2006, Developmental psychobiology.

[126]  S. Rogers,et al.  Visual Fixation Patterns during Reciprocal Social Interaction Distinguish a Subgroup of 6-Month-Old Infants At-Risk for Autism from Comparison Infants , 2007, Journal of autism and developmental disorders.

[127]  Whitney M. Weikum,et al.  Visual Language Discrimination in Infancy , 2007, Science.

[128]  F. Rösler,et al.  Early visual deprivation impairs multisensory interactions in humans , 2007, Nature Neuroscience.

[129]  Roy D. Patterson,et al.  Vocal-Tract Resonances as Indexical Cues in Rhesus Monkeys , 2007, Current Biology.

[130]  L. Bahrick,et al.  The development of infant discrimination of affect in multimodal and unimodal stimulation: The role of intersensory redundancy. , 2007, Developmental psychology.

[131]  O. Pascalis,et al.  The Other-Race Effect Develops During Infancy , 2007, Psychological science.

[132]  O. Pascalis,et al.  A Domain-General Theory of the Development of Perceptual Discrimination , 2007, Current directions in psychological science.

[133]  M. Wallace,et al.  Early experience determines how the senses will interact. , 2007, Journal of neurophysiology.

[134]  Stephen D. Van Hooser,et al.  Experience with moving visual stimuli drives the early development of cortical direction selectivity , 2008, Nature.

[135]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The decline of cross-species intersensory perception in human infants: Underlying mechanisms and its developmental persistence , 2008, Brain Research.

[136]  M. Goldstein,et al.  Social Feedback to Infants' Babbling Facilitates Rapid Phonological Learning , 2008, Psychological science.

[137]  L. Scott,et al.  The Origin of Biases in Face Perception , 2009, Psychological science.

[138]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The emergence of multisensory systems through perceptual narrowing , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[139]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Development of the other-race effect during infancy: evidence toward universality? , 2009, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[140]  M. Hauser,et al.  Five-month-old infants' identification of the sources of vocalizations , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[141]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Heterochrony and Cross-Species Intersensory Matching by Infant Vervet Monkeys , 2009, PloS one.

[142]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Narrowing of intersensory speech perception in infancy , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[143]  Asif A. Ghazanfar,et al.  The Natural Statistics of Audiovisual Speech , 2009, PLoS Comput. Biol..

[144]  G. Thut,et al.  Selective Enhancement of Visual Cortex Excitability by Looming Sounds , 2009, NeuroImage.

[145]  D. Maurer,et al.  Synesthesia: a new approach to understanding the development of perception. , 2013, Developmental psychology.

[146]  J. Werker,et al.  Learning words’ sounds before learning how words sound: 9-Month-olds use distinct objects as cues to categorize speech information , 2009, Cognition.

[147]  L. Merabet,et al.  Neural reorganization following sensory loss: the opportunity of change , 2010, Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

[148]  B. Röder,et al.  Early visual deprivation affects the development of face recognition and of audio-visual speech perception. , 2010, Restorative neurology and neuroscience.

[149]  L. Scott,et al.  Experience-dependent neural specialization during infancy , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[150]  D. Lewkowicz.  Infant perception of audio-visual speech synchrony. , 2010, Developmental psychology.

[151]  Richard Mooney,et al.  Rapid spine stabilization and synaptic enhancement at the onset of behavioural learning , 2010, Nature.

[152]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Intersensory Perception at Birth: Newborns Match Nonhuman Primate Faces and Voices. , 2010, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[153]  U. Noppeney,et al.  Audiovisual Synchrony Improves Motion Discrimination via Enhanced Connectivity between Early Visual and Auditory Areas , 2010, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[154]  Jessica Maye,et al.  Distributional Phonetic Learning at 10 Months of Age. , 2010, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[155]  B. Röder,et al.  The neural basis of lip-reading capabilities is altered by early visual deprivation , 2010, Neuropsychologia.

[156]  Stress Pattern Preference in Spanish-Learning Infants: The Role of Syllable Weight. , 2010, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[157]  R. Lickliter.  The integrated development of sensory organization. , 2011, Clinics in perinatology.

[158]  Alan Slater,et al.  Development of Face Processing Expertise , 2011 .

[159]  R. Saxe,et al.  Language processing in the occipital cortex of congenitally blind adults , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[160]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The Biological Implausibility of the Nature-Nurture Dichotomy & What It Means for the Study of Infancy. , 2011, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[161]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants. , 2012, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[162]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Infants deploy selective attention to the mouth of a talking face when learning speech , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[163]  M. Wallace,et al.  Developmental changes in the multisensory temporal binding window persist into adolescence. , 2012, Developmental science.

[164]  R. Flom,et al.  Perceptual learning: 12-month-olds' discrimination of monkey faces. , 2012, Child development.

[165]  A. Ghazanfar,et al.  Neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in cross-species face-voice matching. , 2012, Developmental science.

[166]  Benjamin A. Rowland,et al.  Incorporating Cross-Modal Statistics in the Development and Maintenance of Multisensory Integration , 2012, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[167]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The development of the uncanny valley in infants. , 2012, Developmental psychobiology.

[168]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The multisensory approach to development , 2012 .

[169]  Whitney M. Weikum,et al.  A Bilingual Advantage in Visual Language Discrimination in Infancy , 2012, Psychological science.

[170]  David J. Lewkowicz,et al.  The Development of Intersensory Perception : Comparative Perspectives , 2013 .

[171]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  Recognition of amodal language identity emerges in infancy , 2013, International journal of behavioral development.

[172]  D. Lewkowicz,et al.  The audiovisual temporal binding window narrows in early childhood. , 2014, Child development.

[173]  R. Mccall,et al.  The Genetic and Environmental Origins of Learning Abilities and Disabilities in the Early School , 2007, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.