4th Annual Meeting of the International Multisensory Research Forum
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Robert Lickliter

Intersensory redundancy educates attention to amodal information in prenatal development
Poster

Robert Lickliter
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Lorraine Bahrick
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

Rebecca Markham
Department of Psychology, Florida International University

     Abstract ID Number: 88
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 20, 2003

Abstract
We have proposed an intersensory redundancy hypothesis (IRH) to account for how detection of amodal information (information not specific to one sense but detectable across two or more senses) might guide perceptual and cognitive development during early infancy (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000, 2002). According to the IRH, intersensory redundancy (the spatially coordinated and temporally synchronous presentation of the same information across two or more senses) facilitates attention, perceptual processing, learning and memory of amodal properties of stimulation during early development. Further, it is proposed that detection of amodal properties in redundant stimulation educates selective attention so that these properties can later be detected in unimodal stimulation. To test this prediction, bobwhite quail embryos were prenatally exposed to a maternal call under two conditions. One group received initial exposure to redundant, bimodal information (e.g., rate, rhythm, duration) of a maternal call and subsequently received unimodal auditory exposure to the call. The second group of embryos received the same stimulation but in the reverse order (initial unimodal - subsequent bimodal). Only those embryos receiving initial bimodal exposure demonstrated a significant preference for the familiar call in the days following hatching, indicating that initial exposure to intersensory redundancy can educate attention to amodal stimulus properties, even when subsequently available only unimodally.


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