PSY-1170Human Development

Intermodal Perception

Yumi Shinohara

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Intermodal PerceptionAt birth, babies have potentials for growth such as

See, Talk, Hear, Think, and Feel

As they grow up, They are able to combine these multiple senses.

Such an amazing thing, isn’t it?

I am a nursing student in Japan, so I hope I can take advantage of this knowledge for my future carrier!

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See

Think Hear

Feel

Talk

What is intermodal perception?

Definition:

Perception of information from object or events available to multiple senses (sounds, sights, smells etc.) simultaneously. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, intermodal perception improves across the first year of life.

Example:

● Auditory- Visual Perception

● Visual- Tactile and Visual- Motor

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HistoryAristotle argues a “sensus communis” or “common sense” in De Anima or On the Soul. It means that,

“Each sense is relative to its particular group of sensible qualities”

James J. Gibson (Psychologist) In “The Senses of considered as Perceptual Systems” He argues that, “Our senses work together as a unified perceptual system”

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Are babies able to recognize their mother’s face at birth?

--Yes, also it is better for them to be exposed their mother’s voice at birth. Slide #6 (experiment)

● by 3 months, infants can match facial and vocal emotional expressions such as happy, sad and angry, in familiar people

● by 5 months, infants can do it in unfamiliar people

Slide #10 (experiment)

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Experiment of Auditory-Visual perceptionPurpose:

Whether the absence of the mother’s voice before infants are born would result in less head turns towards the mother’s face when they are born.

Method:● 15 participants (eight males, seven females neonates) ● Neonates will face their mother and strangers at birth

Do babies turn towards their mother or stranger?

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Result of the experiment

Conclusion:The presence of the mother’s voice facilitate recognition of the mother’s face at birth.

However, it is not yet known how much mother’s voice and face contact for remaining learning and development.

Neonate who had been exposed to their mother’s voice demonstrate more head turns towards the mother’s face.

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Development of Auditory- Visual PerceptionAudio-visual Space

● infants (first week) reliably move their eyes in the direction of a sound.

● Infants are able to discover visual information at the source of the sound.

promotes detection of intersensory redundancy Example: we can guess ambulance coming without seeing when we hear the sound

Object and Events Perception● infants can detect the temporal *synchrony and spatial

colocation uniting the sight and sound (tempo or rhythm).

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*Synchrony:Mutual pattern of attachment behaviors shared by a parent and a child.

Development of Auditory- Visual PerceptionSpeech Perception and Language

● *motherese maintains baby’s attention and assists learn speech● By the age of 2 months, infants can detect voice-lip synchrony ● By 5 to 7 months, they can use face-voice synchrony

Social Perception

● Protoconversation:

● an interaction between adults (mothers) and babies, that includes words, sounds and gestures

● Cf. video “Trevarthen protoconversations”

*motherese:type of speech, with exaggerated intonation and rhythm, often used by adults when speaking to babies.

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Experiment of happy and angry expressive behaviours

Method:There are two women. One woman expressed the affects vocally, and the other woman expressed the affects with facial expressions.

Outcome:Infants looked longer at affectively concordant displays (happy expressions). they are able to discriminate happy affective expressions from anger ones.

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Development of Visual- Tactile and Visual-Motor PerceptionDefinition: perception across vision and touch

Example:one-month-old infants perceive a correspondence between an object that they have explored by holding or mouthing and a visual display of the same object. babies acquired increasingly more details about objects.

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Development of Visual- Tactile and Visual-Motor PerceptionProprioception : self movement based on feedback from kinesthetic sense such as muscles, joints, and vestibular system

rapidly develop coordinated with motor behaviour and visual feedback

Visually guided reaching : reacting behaviour as a function of the changing position of objects

infants can adapt their crawling and early walking attempts (motor behaviour) based on visual information and solidity of the surface.

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Intermodal Perception by Children with autism Result:

Children with autism have difficulty matching toys based on sound track and video displays.

Analysis:

Intermodal perception is negatively correlated with autism.

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What adults can do for infants?

• Engaging infants with exposure to variety of environments• Speaking to infants frequently• Interacting with infants through touching, laughing,  singing and

gestures

When I become a nurse, I want to assist baby’s growth!

“Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world” -Maria Montessori

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References

Cute baby seal, 7-themes.come, retrieved from http://7-themes.com/6966555-cute-baby-seal.html

Bahrick, L.E.,& Lickliter, R.(2009). Perceptional development: Intermodal perception. In B.Glodstein(Ed), Encyclopedia of Perception, Vol 2, 753-756. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publishers.

Sensus Communis, Retrived from http://www.lightthroughmcluhan.org/sensuscommunis.html

Sai, F.Z (2005). The role of the mother’s voice in developing mother’s face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth. Infant and Child Development, 14, 1, 29-50.

Top news health( September, 05, 2011), Retrieved from http://topnews.in/healthcare/content/22317moms-and-kids-bond-each-other-s-calls-just-after-birth

Walker-Andrews, A., & Haviland, J. (1994). Brief report: preferential looking in intermodal perception by children with autism. Journal Of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 24(1), 99-107

Soken, N. H., & Pick, A. D. (August 01, 1992). Intermodal Perception of Happy and Angry Expressive Behaviours by Seven-Month-Old infants. Child Development, 63, 4, 787-795

Figure 1. Schmuckler, M.A., & Fairhall, J. L. (2001). Visual-Proprioceptive Intermodal Perception Using Point Light Displays. Child Development, 72(4), 949.

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