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Infant preferential looking: Face-voice synchrony vs. affect
371 INFANT
PREFERENTIAL
LOOKING:
YAN CAO, SYLVIA QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY,
FACE-VOICE
SYNCHRONY
VS.
AFFECT
HAINS, & DARWIN MUIR KINGSTON, ONT., CANADA
Infants look at an adult’s face longer when there is synchrony between the mouth and voice than when they are desynchronized (Dodd, 1979). However, when affective expression is also manipulated, infants’ visual attention is only slightly affected (Walker, 1982). Possibly, simultaneous manipulation of two or more intermodal cues will affect infant responses towards face-voice synchrony; thus, we manipulated synchrony and facial expression independently. Because different affective expressions are correlated with different intensity of vocal intonation and facial movements, this was controlled by using one expression (e.g., “happy”) and creating a simulation of the opposite expression (e.g., “sad”) by inverting the mouth area and blending it into the face on the video-record. Fifty-one 4-, 5- and 7-montholds viewed two adjacent TV monitors which, in the first l-min. period, presented the same dynamic facial displays, to determine infants’ visual side bias. During subsequent sound trials, half the subjects heard the voice synchronized with the face on their preferred side, and the other half on their non-preferred side. In the next two periods, infants heard a single soundtrack played through a central loudspeaker. In one condition, the voice was synchronized with the matching face. In the other condition, it was synchronized with the inverted-mouth face, creating a conflict between face-voice synchrony and affective expression (order counterbalanced). For half of the infants the normal happy (familiar) expression was manipulated; for the others, the sad (novel) expression was used to test for familiarity effects. For both happy and sad normal expressions, 4-month-olds only showed a side bias, looking at their preferred side 78% and 72% @(7)=5.23, p
PREFERENTIAL
LOOKING:
YAN CAO, SYLVIA QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY,
FACE-VOICE
SYNCHRONY
VS.
AFFECT
HAINS, & DARWIN MUIR KINGSTON, ONT., CANADA
Infants look at an adult’s face longer when there is synchrony between the mouth and voice than when they are desynchronized (Dodd, 1979). However, when affective expression is also manipulated, infants’ visual attention is only slightly affected (Walker, 1982). Possibly, simultaneous manipulation of two or more intermodal cues will affect infant responses towards face-voice synchrony; thus, we manipulated synchrony and facial expression independently. Because different affective expressions are correlated with different intensity of vocal intonation and facial movements, this was controlled by using one expression (e.g., “happy”) and creating a simulation of the opposite expression (e.g., “sad”) by inverting the mouth area and blending it into the face on the video-record. Fifty-one 4-, 5- and 7-montholds viewed two adjacent TV monitors which, in the first l-min. period, presented the same dynamic facial displays, to determine infants’ visual side bias. During subsequent sound trials, half the subjects heard the voice synchronized with the face on their preferred side, and the other half on their non-preferred side. In the next two periods, infants heard a single soundtrack played through a central loudspeaker. In one condition, the voice was synchronized with the matching face. In the other condition, it was synchronized with the inverted-mouth face, creating a conflict between face-voice synchrony and affective expression (order counterbalanced). For half of the infants the normal happy (familiar) expression was manipulated; for the others, the sad (novel) expression was used to test for familiarity effects. For both happy and sad normal expressions, 4-month-olds only showed a side bias, looking at their preferred side 78% and 72% @(7)=5.23, p