A LITERATURE REVIEW ON PERCEPTUAL NARROWING IN INFANCY: DOMAIN SPECIFIC VERSUS DOMAIN GENERAL

Abstract

Human infants become attuned to their culture’s environment and stimuli through perceptual narrowing. Infants are initially sensitive to all stimuli, regardless of what culture the stimuli belonged to. As infants get older however, they lose this sensitivity and narrow down onto only those stimuli that belong to their culture as that is what they have been continuously exposed to. This literature review focuses on studies done on perceptual narrowing in different domains. The domains of focus include language, face perception, and music. The past research is reviewed in terms of what ways we have found in which infants perceptually narrow in the three domains. We go on to conclude what these past findings have to say about perceptual narrowing being a domain general or domain specific concept.