Three‐month‐old infants learn arbitrary auditory–visual pairings between voices and faces

Abstract

Abstract The ability of 3‐month‐old infants to learn arbitrary auditory–visual associations between voices and faces was investigated by familiarizing each infant to two alternating stimuli presented on a VCR monitor. Each stimulus was a voice–face combination, where the voices and faces were male and/or female. On the post‐familiarization test trials each infant was presented alternately with a familiar and a novel voice–face combination, where the novel combination consisted of a voice and a face they had heard and seen previously (but not together), and on these test trials attention was significantly higher to the novel combination. These findings are a clear demonstration that 3‐month‐olds can learn arbitrary voice–face associations, and they are discussed in terms of early intermodal perception and face perception. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.