The McGurk effect in infants.

In the McGurk effect, perceptual identification of auditory speech syllables is influenced by simultaneous presentation of discrepant visible speech syllables. This effect has been found in subjects of different ages and with various native language backgrounds. But no McGurk tests have been conducted with prelinguistic infants. In the present series of experiments, 5-month-old English-exposed infants were tested for the McGurk effect. Infants were first gaze-habituated to an audiovisual Ivai. Two different dishabituation stimuli were then presented: audio /hal-visual Ivai (perceived by adults as Iva!), and audio Idal-visual Ivai (perceived by adults as Ida!). The infants showed generalization from the audiovisual Ivai to the audio /ba/-vtsual Ivai stimulus but not to the audio Idal-visual Ivai stimulus. Follow-up experiments revealed that these generalization differences were not due to a general preference for the audio Idal-visual Ivai stimulus or to the auditory similarity of /ba/ to Ivai relative to Idal. These results suggest that the infants were visually influenced in the same way as Englishspeaking adults are visually influenced