ABSTRACT
Interest in the ontogeny of intermodal functioning has a very long history dating back even to Aristotle (see Boring, 1942). In the seventeenth century Molyneux posed a now classic question to Locke on the origins and development of cross-modal functioning. He asked: What perceptual abilities would be present in a blind man restored to sight? Would the sensory systems be integrated and result in a unitary percept of an object, such as when the man first looked at an object he was manipulating in his hand? Would auditory stimulation result in specific expectations about the visible properties of the sounding object? Or, would visual-based information be distinct and separate from that provided to the other senses, with coordination of intersensory knowledge only accomplished following specific cross-modal experiences? As the literature reviewed in this chapter will reveal, these fundamental questions about the origins and developmental course of cross-modal relations are still largely unresolved. Despite years of research on infants’ perception of auditory–visual relations (for extensive reviews see Rose & Ruff, 1987; Spelke, 1987; Walk & Pick, 1981), theoretical advances have been slow in coming for a variety of reasons.
