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Prenatal exposure to temporal and spatial stimulus properties affects postnatal responsiveness to spatial contiguity in bobwhite quail chicks
Author(s) -
Jaime Mark,
Lickliter Robert
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.20131
Subject(s) - bobwhite quail , contiguity , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , hatching , visual perception , developmental psychology , perception , communication , audiology , quail , neuroscience , biology , cognitive psychology , ecology , medicine
Little is known about how experiential factors guide and organize the development of intersensory perception. This study manipulated the amount of late prenatal and early postnatal experience with the temporal synchrony and spatial contiguity of audio–visual stimulation available to bobwhite quail embryos and hatchlings to explore this question. Results revealed that only embryos exposed to temporally synchronous and spatially contiguous audio–visual stimulation prior to hatching subsequently preferred spatially contiguous audio–visual maternal information following hatching, despite being denied postnatal visual experience. In contrast, embryos that did not receive exposure to both temporal synchrony and spatial contiguity (and were also denied postnatal visual experience) failed to show a preference for the spatial contiguity of maternal auditory and visual information following hatching. These results suggest that prenatal exposure to the amodal properties of temporal synchrony and spatial contiguity facilitate chicks' emerging sensitivity to the spatial contiguity of audio–visual information in the period following hatching. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psyshobiol 48: 233–242, 2006.