Developmental change in young children’s use of haptic information in a visual task: The role of hand movements

Abstract

Preschoolers who explore objects haptically often fail to recognize those objects in subsequent visual tests. This suggests that children may represent qualitatively different information in vision and haptics, and/or that children's haptic perception may be poor. Seventy-two children from 2 ½ to 5 years and 20 adults explored unfamiliar objects either haptically or visually, then chose a visual match from among three test objects, each matching the exemplar on one perceptual dimension. All age groups chose shape-based matches after visual exploration. Five-year-olds and adults also chose shape-based matches after haptic exploration, but younger children did not match consistently in this condition. Certain hand movements performed by children during haptic exploration reliably predicted shape-based matches but occurred at very low frequencies. Thus, younger children's difficulties with haptics-to-vision information transfer appeared to stem from their failure to use their hands to obtain reliable haptic information about objects.The use of perceptual information obtained in one modality (e.g., haptics) to perform a task in another modality (e.g., vision) involves inter-modal information transfer. Inter-modal transfer allows for inter-sensory predictions -for example, anticipating what an object will look like given that you have touched but not yet seen it. Perceptual features that can be apprehended only in one modality -color, odor, and temperature -will clearly not be useful in tasks requiring inter-modal transfer. However, information about object properties like shape, texture, and rhythm can be obtained in more than one modality (Lewkowicz, 1994). Such information can also be obtained in one modality and then used for a task in a different modality. The fact that inter-modal transfer of perceptual information is possible implies that representations built from input in one sensory modality are accessible to multiple perceptual modalities (E. J. Gibson, 1969; J. Gibson, 1966).Adults appear to have no difficulty accessing novel information gathered in one perceptual modality for use in a second (e.g., Abravanel,

Infants Born Preterm Demonstrate Impaired Object Exploration Behaviors Throughout Infancy and Toddlerhood

“…If one is not able to match behaviors to the properties of objects, then learning abilities may be delayed, impaired, or both. 53 It is likely that the impaired ability of infants born preterm to match their behaviors to object properties in the present study emerged, at least in part, from an early, dysfunctional cognition-perception-action loop. 38,54 This loop includes an impoverished history of information gathering characterized by reduced amount and variability of object exploration.…”

Multisensory convergence of visual and haptic object preference across development

“…Recent research has found increases in measures of visual object recognition in 24 month olds who demonstrate more adult-like manual exploration patterns (James et al, 2013). Additional studies examining the development of haptic perception in 4- to 5-year-old children have consistently indicated stereotypically adult-like patterns of haptic exploration by this age, as well as highly successful haptic object recognition abilities in the absence of vision (Bushnell & Baxt, 1999; Kalagher & Jones, 2011; Lederman & Klatzky, 1987). In spite of these achievements, however, a protracted development of visual processing of object shape in children, either behavioral or neural, may have cascading effects on the developmental trajectory of visuohaptic convergence overall.…”

Crossmodal enhancement in the LOC for visuohaptic object recognition over development

“…There is a possibility that the left-lateralized bias found in the LOC in some studies (e.g., Kim, Stevenson, & James, 2012; Yalachkov et al, 2015) may be due not solely to the hand used to explore the stimulus, but also to the strong right-handed preference of the participants tested in these studies. Thus, to mitigate hand-in-use effects in the current study, haptic exploration was performed bimanually similar to other developmental studies of young children (Bushnell & Baxt, 1999; Kalagher & Jones, 2011a, 2011b). Additionally, to minimize differences in handedness preference, we recruited mostly right-handed participants, and did not include any strongly left-preferring participants.…”

“…It was decided based on several reasons that behavioral responses would not be recorded during the MRI scan. First, both children and adults show a reliable preference for two-handed haptic exploration of 3D objects, particularly with regard to shape recognition (Lederman & Klatzky, 1987; Kalagher & Jones, 2011a, 2011b). To include a button press response would restrict exploration to the unnatural single-handed mode, which would likely be more distracting for children than adults.…”

“…Additionally, research has shown that the manner in which infants and children haptically explore objects influences concurrent and later visual perception (Ruff, 1984, 1986, 1989; Bushnell & Boudreau, 1993), and more adult-like patterns of visuomotor exploration at 24 months result in an increase in some measures of visual object recognition (James, Swain, Jones, & Smith, 2013). By 4 to 5 years of age, children’s patterns of haptic object exploration begin to appear stereotypically adult-like (Kalagher & Jones, 2011a, 2011b), and intramodal haptic object recognition is highly accurate (Bushnell & Baxt, 1999). Nevertheless, crossmodal visuohaptic recognition abilities at this age are not yet adult-like.…”