Assessing Individual Differences in the Speed and Accuracy of Intersensory Processing in Young Children: The Intersensory Processing Efficiency Protocol

摘要

Detecting intersensory redundancy guides cognitive, social, and language development. Yet, researchers lack fine-grained, individual difference measures needed for studying how early intersensory skills lead to later outcomes. The Intersensory Processing Efficiency Protocol (IPEP) addresses this need. Across a number of brief trials, participants must find a sound-synchronized visual target event (social, nonsocial) amidst five visual distractor events, simulating the “noisiness” of natural environments. Sixty-four 3- to 5-year-old children were tested using remote eye-tracking. Children showed intersensory processing by attending to the sound-synchronous event more frequently and longer than in a silent visual control, and more frequently than expected by chance. The IPEP provides a fine-grained, nonverbal method for characterizing individual differences in intersensory processing appropriate for infants and children.