We suggest that infants' detection of intersensory redundancy uniting arbi-trarily related speech patterns and events is an important means by which lexical comprehension develops. The ability to detect arbitrary speech-object relations across the auditory and visual modalities, is an important milestone for the development of lexical comprehension. The knowledge that a spoken word 'stands for' an object most likely begins with the perceptual ability to relate specific speech sounds to objects or events on the basis of redundant information such as temporal synchrony in the second half of the first year of life.