Perception of Multisensory Gender Coherence in 6- and 9-month-old Infants

By Anne Hillairet de Boisferon, E. Dupierrix, Paul C. Quinn, H. Lœvenbruck, David J. Lewkowicz, Kang Lee, O. Pascalis. 2015

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One of the most salient social categories conveyed by human faces and voices is gender. We investigated the developmental emergence of the ability to perceive the coherence of auditory and visual attributes of gender in 6- and 9-month-old infants. Infants viewed two side-by-side video clips of a man and a woman singing a nursery rhyme and heard a synchronous male or female soundtrack. Results showed that 6-month-old infants did not match the audible and visible attributes of gender, and 9-month-old infants matched only female faces and voices. These findings indicate that the ability to perceive the multisensory coherence of gender emerges relatively late in infancy and that it reflects the greater experience that most infants have with female faces and voices.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics