Intersensory Perceptual Narrowing in Human Infants

人类婴儿的感觉间知觉狭窄

• 批准号: 8037384
• 负责人: DAVID J LEWKOWICZ
• 金额: $ 30.02万
• 依托单位: FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-03-01 至 2016-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8037384
• 关键词: Adult; Affect; Age; Age-Months; Animals; Auditory; Autistic Disorder; Behavioral; Birth; Child; Cognitive; Collection; Communication; Communication impairment; Conceptions; Cues; Detection; Development; Developmental Disabilities; Diagnostic; Discrimination; Discrimination Learning; Disease; Early Diagnosis; Employee Strikes; Etiology; Event; Exhibits; Face; Gender; Gestures; Human; Infant; Intervention; Language; Learning; Learning Disorders; Life; Light; Literature; Measures; Mediating; Memory; Methods; Monkeys; Music; Nature; Pattern; Perception; Plastics; Play; Prevention; Primates; Process; Race; Research; Role; Sensory; Series; Source; Specific qualifier value; Speech; Speech Perception; Speech Sound; Stimulus; Stream; Tactile; Techniques; Testing; Thinking; Time; Visual; Visual attention; Voice; base; design; developmental disease; experience; improved; indexing; infancy; infant animal; insight; multisensory; novel; prevent; relating to nervous system; response; skills; social; social communication; sound; spatiotemporal; theories; tool; vocalization

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The two primary channels of communication in primate species are the face and the voice. Normally, facial gestures and accompanying vocalizations provide highly redundant information because they are always spatially co-located, temporally synchronous, and specified by overlapping patterns of dynamic audible and visible information. Adults profit from the multisensory redundancy that vocalizing faces offer because they use the redundancy to integrate the separate auditory and visual streams of information into coherent perceptual experiences and because the redundancy makes it easier to detect, learn, and remember vocalizing faces. Although extant evidence indicates that the ability to take advantage of multisensory redundancy emerges early in infancy, the processes underlying its emergence are still poorly understood. Consequently, the current project investigates the development of face-voice integration in human infants and explores the novel idea that perceptual narrowing plays a critical role in the development of intersensory integration. This novel idea is based on a recent discovery by the PI & his colleagues that younger infants can integrate a broader range of faces and voices than do older infants. We have found that young infants can integrate nonnative faces and vocalizations (either monkey faces and their vocalizations or foreign visible and audible speech sounds) but that older infants do not. Our findings are striking because they are counterintuitive and contrary to predictions arising from extant theories of intersensory development. They are, however, consistent with a growing literature on narrowing effects in the speech, face, and music processing domains and suggest that narrowing is a pan-sensory, domain-general process. Consequently, the current project will investigate intersensory perceptual narrowing (IPN). It will be guided by 5 specific aims whose purpose will be to shed light on: (1) the role of temporal intersensory synchrony, configural processing, gestural features, and language-general processes in IPN, (2) the general nature of IPN by testing for it across different types of integration tasks, (3) the role of experience in IPN, (4) the separate contribution of unisensory perceptual processes to IPN, and (5) whether the sensitive period for IPN is affected by multisensory redundancy. We will use the intersensory matching technique to examine face-voice integration, the habituation/test method to investigate learning and discrimination of faces and voices, and measure infant visual attention to index responsiveness. By shedding light on the perceptual and experience-dependent mechanisms that underlie the development of face-voice integration in infancy, this project will provide insights into the emergence of a critical communicative skill that is essential to adaptive functioning at the perceptual, cognitive, and social levels. This, in turn, will provide insights into the etiology of various developmental disorders (e.g., autism) and will facilitate the development of better diagnostic tools for such disorders and help develop better intervention methods to ameliorate these disorders. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Autism, whose hallmark is the inability of children with this developmental disability to respond to the faces and voices of people as sources of social communication, has been growing at an alarming rate of 10-17 percent per year. Because autism and related communication and learning disorders are developmental in nature, the earlier they are diagnosed the more effectively they can be ameliorated and/or prevented. The current project will investigate the development of some critical perceptual skills that enable infants to respond to people<s faces and voices as sources of socially relevant communicative information. As a result, not only will this project provide insights into the possible reasons for impaired functioning in these disorders but also a scientific basis for the design of diagnostic tools that will permit the detection of these disorders much earlier than is currently possible and ultimately their prevention.

描述（由申请人提供）：灵长类动物的两个主要沟通渠道是面部和声音。通常，面部姿势和伴随的发声提供高度冗余的信息，因为它们总是在空间上协同定位，时间上同步，并且由动态可听和可见信息的重叠模式指定。成年人受益于发声面孔提供的多感官冗余，因为他们使用冗余将独立的听觉和视觉信息流整合到连贯的感知体验中，因为冗余使其更容易检测，学习和记住发声面孔。虽然现存的证据表明，利用多感觉冗余的能力出现在婴儿早期，其出现的过程仍然知之甚少。因此，目前的项目调查人类婴儿的脸声整合的发展，并探讨了知觉窄化在感觉间整合的发展中起着关键作用的新观点。这个新的想法是基于PI和他的同事最近的一项发现，即年幼的婴儿比年长的婴儿能够整合更广泛的面孔和声音。我们发现，年幼的婴儿可以整合非母语的面孔和发声（无论是猴子的面孔和他们的发声，还是外来的可见和可听的语音），但年龄较大的婴儿则不行。我们的发现是惊人的，因为它们是违反直觉的，与现存的感觉发育理论的预测相反。然而，他们是一致的，越来越多的文献缩小在语音，面部和音乐处理域的影响，并建议缩小是一个泛感官，域一般的过程。因此，目前的项目将研究感觉间知觉窄化（IPN）。它将以5个具体目标为指导，其目的是阐明：（1）时间感觉间同步、听觉处理、手势特征和语言一般处理在IPN中的作用，（2）通过在不同类型的整合任务中测试IPN的一般性质，（3）经验在IPN中的作用，（4）单一感觉知觉过程对IPN的单独贡献，（5）IPN的敏感期是否受多感觉冗余的影响。我们将使用感觉间匹配技术来检查面孔-声音整合，习惯化/测试方法来调查面孔和声音的学习和辨别，并测量婴儿视觉注意指数反应。通过阐明婴儿期脸声整合发展的感知和经验依赖机制，该项目将提供对感知，认知和社会层面适应功能至关重要的关键沟通技能的出现的见解。反过来，这将提供对各种发育障碍（例如，自闭症），并将促进开发更好的诊断工具，为这些疾病，并帮助开发更好的干预方法，以改善这些疾病。 公共卫生相关性：自闭症的特点是患有这种发育障碍的儿童无法对作为社会交流来源的人的面孔和声音做出反应，一直以每年10%至17%的惊人速度增长。由于自闭症和相关的沟通和学习障碍在本质上是发展性的，他们被诊断得越早，他们就可以更有效地改善和/或预防。目前的项目将调查一些关键的知觉技能的发展，使婴儿能够对人的面孔和声音作出反应，作为社会相关的交流信息的来源。因此，该项目不仅将深入了解这些疾病中功能受损的可能原因，而且还将为设计诊断工具提供科学依据，这些工具将允许比目前可能更早地检测这些疾病并最终预防这些疾病。