Fine-grained analyses of multisensory integration and emerging language in 24-month-olds

Abstract

The Multisensory Assessment Protocol (MAAP) measures whether participants look at a synchronized audiovisual event more than an asynchronous audiovisual event or a distractor. It has been used in previous studies to show the relationship between multisensory integration and language in infancy and toddlerhood. For example, Bruce et al. (2022) found that performance on the MAAP in social conditions was predictive of vocabulary in 24-month-olds monolingual English learners. However, it was the collapsed looking-time data for each condition across six trials that yielded these results. Instead, this analysis used fine-grained measures to characterize attention changes over time. The preliminary findings showed that toddlers’ attention to the initial trials of social events, but the final trials of nonsocial events, was predictive of their vocabulary. The current study demonstrates that analyzing changes in attention throughout the protocol can lead to a better understanding of the relationship between multisensory integration and vocabulary.