The development of sound-shape correspondence effect in infants

Pejovic, J. , Molnar, M. . & Martin, C. .

Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language

Sound-shape correspondence represents a bias associating acoustic (name) and visual (shape) information. A well-known example, shown with adults and toddlers, is association of the pseudo-word kiki with angular objects, and the pseudo-word bouba" with rounded objects. However, studies in preverbal infants show contradictory results. The first experiment aimed to replicate the previously found sound-shape effect in 4-month-old (MO) infants. In the preference looking paradigm 4 MO Spanish monolingual and Spanish-Basque bilingual infants were exposed to congruent trials (buba presented with angular objects/"kike with rounded objects) and incongruent trials (kike with rounded objects/bubawith angular objects). The results did not replicate previous finding, showing no significant difference between congruent and incongruent trials. The second experiment examined whether language specific stimuli can elicit the sound-shape effect. Using the same paradigm, another group of 4 MO Spanish monolingual infants were presented with Spanish-like pseudo-words: racetofor angular and bubano for rounded objects. The results again did not show difference between congruent and incongruent trials. Our results from two experiments show no evidence for sound-shape correspondence in 4 MO infants. One of the reasons can be poor multisensory integration between auditory and visual information at that age. Our next study examine the sound-shape effect in 12 MO infants when multisensory integration is more developed. The preliminary results in relation with previous findings will be discussed.