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6 - Paradoxical psychological functioning in early child development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

By
David J. Lewkowicz  and
Asif A. Ghazanfar
Edited by
Narinder Kapur
With
Alvaro Pascual-Leone ,
Vilayanur Ramachandran ,
Jonathan Cole ,
Sergio Della Sala ,
Tom Manly  and
Andrew Mayes
Foreword by
Oliver Sacks
David J. Lewkowicz
Affiliation:
Florida Atlantic University
Asif A. Ghazanfar
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Narinder Kapur
Affiliation:
University College London
Alvaro Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School
Vilayanur Ramachandran
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Jonathan Cole
Affiliation:
University of Bournemouth
Sergio Della Sala
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Tom Manly
Affiliation:
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
Andrew Mayes
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Oliver Sacks
Affiliation:
Columbia University Medical Center
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Summary

Summary

Development is a progressive process that results in the growth and proliferation of motor, perceptual and cognitive skills. A growing body of evidence shows, however, that seemingly paradoxical regressive processes also contribute to perceptual development and to the emergence of specialization. This evidence shows that unisensory perceptual sensitivity in early infancy is so broadly tuned that young infants respond to, and discriminate, native sensory inputs (e.g. speech sounds in their own language and faces from their own species and race) as well as non-native sensory inputs (e.g. speech sounds from other languages and faces from other species and other races). In contrast, older infants only respond to native inputs. For example, younger but not older infants discriminate monkey, human, and other-race faces, native and foreign speech contrasts, and musical rhythms from different cultures. Here, we review new findings indicating that perceptual narrowing is not just a unisensory developmental process, but a general, pan-sensory one. These new data reveal that young infants can perceive non-native (monkey) faces and vocalizations as well as non-native speech gestures and vocalizations as coherent multisensory events, and that this broad multisensory perceptual tuning is present at birth. These data also reveal that this broad tuning narrows by the end of the first year of life, leaving older infants only with the ability to perceive the multisensory coherence of native sensory inputs.

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Chapter
Information
The Paradoxical Brain , pp. 110 - 129
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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