First-sight recognition of touched objects shows that chicks can solve Molyneux’s problem

If a congenitally blind person learns to distinguish between a cube and a sphere by touch, would they immediately recognise these objects by sight once their vision is restored? This question, posed by Molyneux in 1688, has puzzled philosophers and scientists since then. To overcome ethical and practical difficulties in the investigation of cross-modal recognition, we studied inexperienced poultry chicks, that can be reared in darkness until the moment of a visual test, with no detrimental consequences. After hatching chicks in darkness, we exposed them to either tactile smooth or tactile bumpy stimuli for 24 hours. Immediately after the tactile exposure, chicks were tested in a visual recognition task, during their first experience with light. At first sight, chicks that had been exposed in the tactile modality to smooth stimuli approached the visual smooth stimulus significantly more than those exposed to the tactile bumpy stimuli. These results show that visually inexperienced chicks can solve Molyneux’s problem, indicating cross-modal recognition does not require previous multimodal experience. At least in this precocial species, supra-modal brain areas appear functional already at birth. This discovery paves the way to investigation of predisposed cross-modal cognition that does not depend on visual experience.