Lewkowicz David J, Marcovitch Stuart
Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Rd., Boca Raton, Florida 33431, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2006 May;48(4):288-300. doi: 10.1002/dev.20140.
This study investigated the perception of complex audiovisual rhythmic patterns in 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-month-old human infants. In Experiment 1, we first habituated infants to an event in which an object could be seen and heard bouncing in a rhythmic fashion. We then tested them to determine if they would detect a relative temporal pattern change produced by rearranging the intrapattern intervals. Regardless of age, infants successfully detected the pattern change. In Experiment 2, we asked whether infants also can extract rhythmic pattern invariance amid tempo variations. Thus, we first habituated infants to a particular rhythmic pattern but this time varying in its tempo of presentation across trials. We then administered one test trial in which a novel rhythm was presented at a familiar tempo and another test trial in which a familiar rhythm was presented at a novel tempo. Infants detected both types of changes indicating that they perceived the invariant rhythm and that they did so despite the fact that they also detected the varying tempo. Overall, the findings demonstrate that infants between 4 and 10 months of age can perceive and discriminate complex audiovisual temporal patterns on the basis of relative temporal differences and that they also can learn the invariant nature of such patterns.
本研究调查了4个月、6个月、8个月和10个月大的人类婴儿对复杂视听节奏模式的感知。在实验1中，我们首先让婴儿习惯一种事件，即可以看到和听到一个物体以有节奏的方式弹跳。然后我们对他们进行测试，以确定他们是否能检测到通过重新排列模式内间隔而产生的相对时间模式变化。无论年龄大小，婴儿都成功地检测到了模式变化。在实验2中，我们询问婴儿是否也能在节奏变化中提取节奏模式不变性。因此，我们首先让婴儿习惯一种特定的节奏模式，但这次在不同的试验中其呈现节奏有所变化。然后我们进行了一次测试试验，其中以熟悉的节奏呈现一种新节奏，以及另一次测试试验，其中以新节奏呈现一种熟悉的节奏。婴儿检测到了这两种类型的变化，表明他们感知到了不变的节奏，而且尽管他们也检测到了变化的节奏，但他们仍然能够做到这一点。总体而言，研究结果表明，4至10个月大的婴儿能够基于相对时间差异感知和辨别复杂的视听时间模式，并且他们也能够学习此类模式的不变性质。
