CML Colloquium: The Development of Multisensory Perception in Infancy & the Role of Experience

4 May 2016

CML Colloquium 04 May 2016, 16:15, Room 221, ESA West (Flügelbauten)

Professor Dr. David Lewkowicz

Our world is specified by a plethora of multisensory perceptual inputs. Potentially, this could give rise to fragmented perceptual experiences. The fact is that we usually perceive our world as a unitary and meaningful place. For example, we perceive our interlocutors as people communicating specific messages to us rather than as sources of disconnected auditory and visual sensations. Our ability to have such coherent perceptual experiences is due to the fact that multisensory inputs are typically spatiotemporally correlated and crossmodally equivalent and to the fact that our brains have evolved mechanisms to perceive multisensory coherence. In this talk, I will show that the ability to perceive multisensory coherence develops gradually early in life and that it depends critically on early experience.

The talk will be followed by a reception.