Sound–shape crossmodal correspondence, the naturally occurring associations between abstract visual shapes and nonsense sounds, is one aspect of multisensory processing that strengthens across early childhood. Little is known regarding whether school-aged children exhibit other variants of sound–shape correspondences such as audio–tactile (AT) associations between tactile shapes and nonsense sounds. Based on previous research in blind individuals suggesting the role of visual experience in establishing sound–shape correspondence, we hypothesized that children would show weaker AT association than adults and that children’s AT association would be enhanced with visual experience of the shapes. In Experiment 1, we showed that, when asked to match shapes explored haptically via touch to nonsense words, 6- to 8-year-olds exhibited inconsistent AT associations, whereas older children and adults exhibited the expected AT associations, despite robust audio–visual (AV) associations found across all age groups in a related study. In Experiment 2, we confirmed the role of visual experience in enhancing AT association; here, 6- to 8-year-olds could exhibit the expected AT association if first exposed to the AV condition, whereas adults showed the expected AT association irrespective of whether the AV condition was tested first or second. Our finding suggests that AT sound–shape correspondence is weak early in development relative to AV sound–shape correspondence, paralleling previous findings on the development of other types of multisensory associations. The potential role of visual experience in the development of sound–shape correspondences in other senses is discussed.

声音-形状交叉模态对应，抽象的视觉形状和无意义的声音之间自然发生的关联，是多感官处理的一个方面，在整个幼儿期得到加强。关于学龄儿童是否表现出声音-形状对应的其他变体，例如触觉之间的音频-触觉（AT）关联，我们知之甚少。形状和无意义的声音。基于先前对盲人进行的研究表明视觉体验在建立声音-形状对应关系中的作用，我们假设儿童会表现出比成人更弱的 AT 关联，并且儿童的 AT 关联会随着形状的视觉体验而增强。在实验 1 中，我们表明，当要求将通过触觉探索的形状与无意义的单词进行匹配时，6 到 8 岁的儿童表现出不一致的 AT 关联，而年龄较大的儿童和成人表现出预期的 AT 关联，尽管有强大的视听(AV) 在相关研究中发现所有年龄组的关联。在实验 2 中，我们确认了视觉体验在增强 AT 关联中的作用；在这里，如果第一次接触 AV 条件，6 到 8 岁的孩子可能会表现出预期的 AT 关联，而无论是首先还是第二次测试 AV 条件，成人都表现出预期的 AT 关联。我们的发现表明，相对于 AV 声音-形状对应，AT 声音-形状对应在发展早期较弱，这与之前关于其他类型多感官关联发展的发现相似。讨论了视觉体验在其他感官中声音-形状对应发展中的潜在作用。