Sensitivity to auditory-tactile colocation in early infancy.

An ability to detect the common location of multisensory stimulation is essential for us to perceive a coherent environment, to represent the interface between the body and the external world, and to act on sensory information. Regarding the tactile environment "at hand", we need to represent somatosensory stimuli impinging on the skin surface in the same spatial reference frame as distal stimuli, such as those transduced by vision and audition. Across two experiments we investigated whether 6- (n = 14; Experiment 1) and 4-month-old (n = 14; Experiment 2) infants were sensitive to the colocation of tactile and auditory signals delivered to the hands.