Is Perceptual Narrowing too Narrow

There is a growing list of examples illustrating that infants are transitioning from having earlier abilities that appear more “universal,” “broadly tuned,” or “unconstrained” to having later abilities that appear more “specialized,” “narrowly tuned,” or “constrained.” Perceptual narrowing, a well-known phenomenon related to face, speech, and music perception in the 1st year, represents a subset of these findings. In this commentary, we posit that the current definition of perceptual narrowing is too narrow and the phenomenon involves a more general learning mechanism that extends beyond the 1st year and beyond perceptual tasks.