Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Without conscious thought, listeners link events in the worldto sounds they hear. We study one surprising example: Adultscan judge the temperature of water simply from hearing itbeing poured. How do these nuanced perceptual skillsdevelop? Is extensive auditory experience required, or arethese skills present in early childhood? In Exp.1, adults wereexceptionally good at judging whether water was hot vs. coldfrom pouring sounds (M=93% accuracy; N=104). In Exp.2, wetested this ability in N=113 children aged 3-12 years, and foundevidence of developmental change: Age significantly predictedaccuracy (p<0.001, logistic regression), such that 3-5 year oldchildren performed at chance while 85% of children age 6+answered correctly. Overall our data suggest that perception ofnuanced differences between auditory events is not part ofearly-developing cross-modal cognition, and instead developsover the first six years of life.