School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2SB, UK; Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization (DPSS), University of Padua, 35131, Padova, Italy.
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2SB, UK.
Curr Biol. 2018 Nov 19;28(22):R1294-R1295. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.004.
When newborns leave the enclosed spatial environment of the uterus and arrive in the outside world, they are faced with a new audiovisual environment of dynamic objects, actions and events both close to themselves and further away. One particular challenge concerns matching and making sense of the visual and auditory cues specifying object motion [1-5]. Previous research shows that adults prioritise the integration of auditory and visual information indicating looming (for example [2]) and that rhesus monkeys can integrate multisensory looming, but not receding, audiovisual stimuli [4]. Despite the clear adaptive value of correctly perceiving motion towards or away from the self - for defence against and physical interaction with moving objects - such a perceptual ability would clearly be undermined if newborns were unable to correctly match the auditory and visual cues to such motion. This multisensory perceptual skill has scarcely been studied in human ontogeny. Here we report that newborns only a few hours old are sensitive to matches between changes in visual size and in auditory intensity. This early multisensory competence demonstrates that, rather than being entirely naïve to their new audiovisual environment, newborns can make sense of the multisensory cue combinations specifying motion with respect to themselves.
当新生儿离开子宫这个封闭的空间环境，来到外部世界时，他们会面临一个全新的动态物体、动作和事件的视听环境，这些物体、动作和事件或近或远。其中一个特别的挑战是匹配和理解指定物体运动的视觉和听觉线索[1-5]。先前的研究表明，成年人优先整合指定逼近（例如[2]）的听觉和视觉信息，并且猕猴可以整合多感觉逼近，但不能整合多感觉退去的视听刺激[4]。尽管正确感知朝向或远离自身的运动具有明显的适应性价值——用于防御和与运动物体进行身体互动——但如果新生儿无法正确匹配听觉和视觉线索以感知此类运动，这种感知能力显然会受到损害。这种多感官感知技能在人类个体发育中几乎没有被研究过。在这里，我们报告说，仅出生数小时的新生儿对视觉大小变化和听觉强度变化之间的匹配很敏感。这种早期的多感官能力表明，新生儿并不是完全对他们新的视听环境一无所知，而是能够理解指定自身运动的多感觉线索组合。
