Title: Face-voice stimuli distract infants' attention from intermodal detection of numerical invariant

Authors: Vasiliki Tsourtou

Addresses: Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Crete, University Campus, Gallos, 74100 Rethymno, Crete, Greece

Abstract: Seventy eight infants (aged five, seven and nine months) participated in this cross-sectional experimental research. Infants' responses to the two-dimensional stimuli were assessed through preferential looking technique. We tested the hypothesis that face stimuli - compared to object-like stimuli - would attract infants' attention in such a way that infants would fail to intermodally perceive the numerical invariant. In conditions with objects and piano sounds varying in numerosity, boys managed to detect numerical invariant at seven months, whereas girls did so at five months. In conditions with social stimuli (photo of the mother's face or photo of an unknown woman's face, accompanied by taped voice of the mother or of the unknown woman), infants' tendency to intermodally detect the numerical invariant was found to be reduced at all ages in both males and females.

Keywords: face perception; intermodal detection; cross-modal perception; numerical invariant; numerosity; infant development; infants; infant responses; face stimuli; piano sounds; object stimuli; voice stimuli; gender; number perception; attention distraction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCISTUDIES.2013.054774

International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies, 2013 Vol.2 No.1, pp.76 - 86

Received: 06 Jun 2012
Accepted: 02 Feb 2013
Published online: 19 Jul 2014 *

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