The effect of stimulus familiarity on modality dominance

When unfamiliar non-speech sounds and visual input cooccur, they often compete for attention, with auditory input overshadowing visual information for infants and young children (Robinson & Sloutsky, in press; Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). The current study investigated whether labels and familiar sounds also compete for attention with corresponding visual information in infancy. The results indicate that, unlike unfamiliar, non-speech sounds, labels do not compete for attention with corresponding visual information at 16-months of age: 16-month-olds ably encoded both auditory and visual information. At the same time 8-month-olds only encoded the labels. When infants were familiarized to the same non-speech sounds that overshadowed visual input in Robinson and Sloutsky’s study, 16-month-olds encoded both auditory and visual information, whereas, 8-month-olds continued to encode only the sounds. These findings, in conjunction with the findings of Robinson and Sloutsky (in press) and Sloutsky and Napolitano (2003), point to an important developmental progression in processing of auditory and