ABSTRACT
A persistent and unresolved question concerning the development of intermodal perception concerns whether infants’ sense modalities are integrated or differentiated at birth. Even in the present volume, the contributors represent different views on this question. In brief, from an integration-association account, sensations from different receptors are separate at birth. The developmental task is to coordinate these sensations to achieve a single percept (e.g., Birch & Lefford, 1963; Bryant, 1974; Piaget, 1954). Mechanisms proposed for coordinating sensations include learning principles such as association in some accounts and various mediating processes in others.
