During infancy, intersensory facilitation declines gradually as unisensory perception develops. However, this trade-off was mainly investigated using audiovisual stimulations. Here, fifty 4- to 12-month-old infants (26 females, predominately White) were tested in 2017–2020 to determine whether the facilitating effect of their mother's body odor on neural face categorization, as previously observed at 4 months, decreases with age. In a baseline odor context, the results revealed a face-selective electroencephalographic response that increases and changes qualitatively between 4 and 12 months, marking improved face categorization. At the same time, the benefit of adding maternal odor fades with age (R2 =.31), indicating an inverse relation with the amplitude of the visual response, and generalizing to olfactory-visual interactions previous evidence from the audiovisual domain.
CITATION STYLE
Rekow, D., Baudouin, J. Y., Kiseleva, A., Rossion, B., Durand, K., Schaal, B., & Leleu, A. (2024). Olfactory-to-visual facilitation in the infant brain declines gradually from 4 to 12 months. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14124
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