The period between six and 12 months is a sensitive period for language learning during which infants undergo auditory perceptual attunement, and recent results indicate that this sensitive period may exist across sensory modalities. We tested infants at three stages of perceptual attunement (six, nine, and 11 months) to determine 1) whether they were sensitive to the congruence between heard and seen speech stimuli in an unfamiliar language, and 2) whether familiarization with congruent audiovisual speech could boost subsequent non-native auditory discrimination. Infants at six- and nine-, but not 11-months, detected audiovisual congruence of non-native syllables. Familiarization to incongruent, but not congruent, audiovisual speech changed auditory discrimination at test for six-month-olds but not nine- or 11-month-olds. These results advance the proposal that speech perception is audiovisual from early in ontogeny, and that the sensitive period for audiovisual speech perception may last somewhat longer than that for auditory perception alone.

中文翻译：

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生命第一年视听言语感知的组织与重组

6 到 12 个月是语言学习的敏感期，在此期间婴儿会经历听觉感知协调，最近的结果表明，这个敏感期可能存在于各种感官模式中。我们在三个感知协调阶段（6 个月、9 个月和 11 个月）对婴儿进行了测试，以确定 1) 他们是否对陌生语言中听到和看到的语音刺激之间的一致性敏感，以及 2) 熟悉一致的视听语音是否可以促进随后的非母语听觉歧视。6 个月和 9 个月大但不是 11 个月大的婴儿检测到非母语音节的视听一致性。熟悉不一致但不一致的视听语音改变了 6 个月大的孩子在测试中的听觉歧视，但没有改变 9 个月或 11 个月大的孩子。