Infants use disambiguation to learn new voices

Resumen

The ability to identify individuals by voice is a fundamental communicative ability. However, little is known about the expectations that infants hold when learning the voices of unfamiliar people. Here, the voice-learning skills of 4- and 8-month-old infants (N=53) were tested using a preferential looking task that involved audio-visual stimuli of their mothers and other unfamiliar women. Findings reveal that the expectation that novel voices map on to novel faces emerges as early as 4 months of age, and that infants can retain learning of face-voice pairings via disambiguation by 8 months of age. This study provides new insights about voice learning in infancy, and the mechanisms by which infants integrate the visual and auditory features of individuals around them.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Orena, A. J., & Werker, J. F. (2020). Infants use disambiguation to learn new voices. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/czkhx