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Updated: Feb 15, 2026
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How to Obtain Reliable Visual Event-related Potentials in Newborns
Published on: October 24, 2019
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Newborns are sensitive to the correspondence between auditory pitch and visuospatial elevation
Peter Walker1,2, James Gavin Bremner1, Marco Lunghi3
1Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.
Developmental Psychobiology
|January 23, 2018
Summary
Newborns show sensitivity to cross-sensory correspondences, suggesting these connections between senses are innate. This research indicates that the mapping of relative sensory features is present from birth, not learned.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Sensory perception
Background:
- Cross-sensory associations link information across different senses.
- Amodal and arbitrary associations are context-insensitive.
- Cross-sensory correspondences are context-sensitive and their origin (innate vs. learned) is debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether cross-sensory correspondences are present at birth.
- To differentiate between innate correspondences and learned associations.
Main Methods:
- Human newborns (median age 44 hours) were presented with visual animations of two balls moving vertically.
- An auditory stimulus with rising and falling pitch accompanied the visual display.
- The auditory-visual pairing was either congruent (pitch matched ball movement) or incongruent.
Main Results:
- Newborns' looking behavior demonstrated sensitivity to the congruence between auditory pitch and visual motion.
- This sensitivity suggests an innate ability to match relative features across senses.
Conclusions:
- Cross-sensory correspondences appear to be present at birth.
- This finding challenges the notion that all such associations are learned through experience.
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