Developmental Origins of Cultural Differences in Audiovisual Speech Integration: Evidence from Canadian and Chinese Infants

This study investigated the early development of cultural variations in audiovisual speech perception in infancy. Focusing on the McGurk effect, we examined the audiovisual speech integration in 6- to 12-month-old infants from Canadian (N = 55) and Chinese (N = 80) cultural contexts. Infants were presented with auditory syllables paired with videos of a female face articulating syllables in a "moving-still-moving-still" pattern, designed to elicit alternating auditory percepts should the integration occurred. We recorded infants’ looking time to index their auditory perception and found robust audiovisual integration in Canadian infants from 6 months. By contrast, Chinese infants exhibited a more protracted developmental pattern, showing developmental changes in integration capacity over the same age range. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that the presentation of other-race faces differentially impacted the integration performance across cultures. These findings coincided with notable differences in caregiving practices, where Canadian infants predominantly experienced nuclear family care, whereas Chinese infants received more extended family care. These findings suggest that cultural variations in audiovisual integration emerge early in infancy and may be influenced by early social experiences, particularly caregiving styles. The observed divergence aligns with previous research on older populations, indicating that cultural differences in audiovisual speech perception manifest early and persist into adulthood. This study highlights the importance of cultural context in understanding the development of multisensory speech perception, with implications for theories of language acquisition, early identification of atypical development, and the design of culturally sensitive language education programs.