ABSTRACT
We live in a world full of objects and events that provide multimodal stimulation, i.e., stimulation to two or more sensory modalities. For example, we not only see the glow of an open log fire, but we feel its warmth on our skin, hear the logs crackling, and smell the odor of the burning wood. The world of the human infant is also multimodal. It is now clear that at birth or soon after, the human neonate perceives visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory stimulation (Fantz, 1963; Haith, 1966; Mendelson & Haith, 1976; Nemanova, as cited by Pick, 1961; Rovee, Cohen, & Shlapack, 1975; Sherman & Sherman, 1925). In the usual course of events, the mother or other caregiver provides the infant with integrated multimodal stimulation from birth since people in general, and caregivers in particular, can be seen, heard, felt, and so on. However, once visually directed reaching develops at around 5-months-of-age (White, Castle, & Held, 1964) infants become adept at gaining one particular kind of multimodal stimulation for themselves. At this stage in development, infants begin to look at objects that they hold and during the second half year, simultaneous visual and haptic exploration of objects occurs frequently during an infant’s interaction with the environment.
