The study of speech perception and colour vision in infants has provided information on the ontogeny of mind and a general investigative framework that would be useful in the developmental study of music perception. Infants differentiate speech contrasts and primary colours similarly to adults, suggesting that predispositions for systematic representation of the percep- tual world may be influential from birth. Comparatively little is known about infants' musical processing, but what has been discovered is already serving to broaden the general understanding of perception. A review of findings in speech and vision is presented as a model for possible future work in music perception that could result in greater understanding of perceptual development.
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