Audiovisual Interactions in Categorization

描述（由申请人提供）：婴儿面临着世界上大量复杂的信息，这些信息是通过每一种感官形态传递的。为了感知有组织的信息流，婴儿必须分离出指定统一对象和事件的信息流（例如，有冲击力声音的对象，有声音的移动面部）。然而，研究表明，来自不同模式的信息可能会相互作用，从而改变对物体或事件的感知。本研究的目的是调查视听互动的分类，并确定其发展过程。该研究的中心假设是，听觉信息在分类中起着重要作用，并且在发展过程中，这种作用会根据个体的类别知识程度而改变。所提出的调查具有重要意义，因为它们将提供感官间知觉和分类研究之间的联系，以证明多模态信息在类别发展中的作用。性别是一个自然的类别，它沿着一个连续体变化，并已被证明有一个长期的发展轨迹，一直持续到童年。先前的研究已经证明了性别分类中的典型效应，即成人和儿童对男性或女性面孔的分类更准确、更快。婴儿和成人将接受测试，以确定面部性别分类是否会基于同步声音的性别而产生偏差。这种影响的范围和发展将通过改变被要求分类的面孔的典型性来测试。5个月和10个月大的婴儿将在婴儿控制的习惯化过程中进行测试，其中性别模糊或不太典型的单一性别面孔与非常典型的声音配对，并与非常典型的男性和女性面孔进行测试。婴儿对习惯化语音的异性偏好表明，婴儿根据同步语音的性别对习惯化面孔进行分类。成年参与者将被要求识别一系列性别模糊的、不太典型的、与非常典型的声音同步的面孔的性别。准确性和反应时间数据将被分析，在试验中，脸和声音的性别匹配与试验中，脸和声音的性别不匹配。未来的研究将包括其他类别和其他情态组合的相互作用的调查。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The infant is faced with a barrage of complex information in the world, being conveyed through every sense modality. The infant must isolate streams of information specifying unified objects and events (e.g., object with impact sound, moving face with voice) in order to perceive an organized flow of information. However, research has suggested that information from different modalities may interact with one another to alter perception of an object or event. The objective of this project is to investigate audiovisual interactions in categorization and identify their developmental course. The central hypothesis for the proposed research is that auditory information plays an important role in categorization and that this role is modified during development, based on the extent of the individual's category knowledge. The proposed investigations are significant because they will provide a link between research in intersensory perception and categorization to demonstrate the role of multimodal information in the development of categories. Gender is a natural category that varies along a continuum and has been shown to have a long developmental trajectory that continues well into childhood. Previous research has demonstrated a typicality effect in gender categorization in which more masculine or feminine faces are categorized more accurately and quickly by both adults and children. Infants and adults will be tested to determine if categorization of facial gender can be biased based on the gender of a synchronous voice. The range, and development, of this effect will be tested by varying the typicality of the face which individuals are asked to categorize. Five- and ten-month-old infants will be tested in an infant-controlled habituation procedure in which gender-ambiguous or less typical faces of a single gender are paired with very typical voices and tested with very typical male and female faces. Preference for the opposite gender of the habituation voices indicates that infants categorized the habituation faces based on the gender of the synchronous voices. Adult participants will be asked to identify the gender of a series of gender-ambiguous and less typical faces synchronized with very typical voices. Accuracy and reaction time data will be analyzed for trials in which the gender of face and voice match versus trials in which the gender of face and voice are mismatched. Future research will include investigations of other categories and interactions of other modality combinations.