Typically researched in infants, intermodal mapping refers to the ability to gather information about a particular stimulus by integrating multiple senses.
[1] Researched by American psychologists Andrew N. Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore, this capability plays an underlying part in neonatal imitation (infant capacity to model observable adult behavior).
[2] Therefore, stimuli are not necessarily restricted to a singular sense, but allow them to exist universally in the brain and integrate in ways to produce complex outcomes.
Meltzoff and Moore's studies typically mirror the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP) as they observe both behavior in relation to response time in infants.
Overall, researchers doubt the possibility that infants have the inherent ability to observe and create their own sequence of movements producing the same “configurations” or actions of the adults they're modeling.