ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on infants’ explorations of events that they see and hear. Mature perceivers know a great deal about the audible and visible characteristics of things. Exploration may be an infant’s principal endeavor. Observations of an exploring infant may reveal both the knowledge on which the earliest investigations depend and the knowledge to which they lead. An adult’s knowledge of audible and visible episodes may derive from a cycle of exploring and knowing that begins early in life. The chapter considers the roles of nature and nurture in the development of auditory-visual perception and the qualitative or quantitative nature of of developmental changes in intersensory functioning. It discusses infants’ sensitivity to the temporal synchrony of the sounds and visible movements of objects. The chapter also focuses on the perceptual knowledge that makes exploration possible. A baby can develop knowledge about temporally synchronized sounds and objects.
