Tactual Habituation and Discrimination of Form in Infancy: A Comparison with Vision

Abstract

Tactual discriminative abilities out of the control of vision are studied in 5-month-old infants, and compared with their visual discriminative abilities. The relevance of a habituation/reaction to novelty procedure in the tactual modality is tested. An infant control procedure is used in both modalities on 2 independent samples of 32 infants each. Habituation and discrimination occur tactually as well as visually, the duration of holds decreasing more than the duration of looks. Accumulated holding time is 3 times longer than accumulated looking time. Analogies and discrepancies between tactual and visual habituations are discussed, and the problem of sensory dominance is raised. Such results are basic to studies on cross-modal transfer, from vision to touch as well as from touch to vision.

Asymmetries in infant cross-modal transfer

“…The success infants showed in tactual intramodal performance accords well with findings from other labs (e.g., Soroka et al, 1979;Streri & Pecheux, 1986a) and with findings from two earlier studies we did with this age group (Gottfried & Rose, 1980;Rose et al, 1981a). There is growing evidence that tactual exploration, discrimination, and novelty may have a special significance in infancy.…”

“…As expected, performance in the V-V condition was superior to that in the other conditions. This superiority is probably attributable to the infant's greater speed in encoding visual over tactual information Streri & Pecheux, 1986a) and to the fact that contextual changes from familiarization to test were minimal. Somewhat surprisingly, the relative difficulty of T-T was not as pronounced as it generally is for older children: T-T proved easier than V-T transfer but was no more difficult than T-V transfer.…”

“…Streri (1987) suggests that because eye-hand coordination is just emerging at this later age, the perceptual function of the hand may be temporarily subordinated to its motor function, impeding T-V transfer. Although this explanation is plausible, it is puzzling that T-T functioning is not similarly impaired in 4-5-month-olds (Streri & Pecheux, 1986a). Also, since the sample size is small in these studies {N = 8 per group), it is unclear how robust these shifts in asymmetries are.…”

What do We Know about Neonatal Cognition?

“…An example of discontinuous development concerns the crossmodal transfer from touch to vision that is present at birth. This ability disappears at 5 months [85], and reappears at 6 months of age. This apparent weakness is due to the emergence of a new ability: the coordination between prehension and vision (for a review of this developmental process, see [86]).…”

Intermanual and Intermodal Transfer in Human Newborns: Neonatal Behavioral Evidence and Neurocognitive Approach

“…However, besides possessing manual brief reactions (reflex), newborns are also able to handle small objects and to perceive their properties. To reveal this tactile ability, researchers have applied a habituation-dishabituation procedure to the tactile modality, just as in the visual modality (Streri & Pêcheux, 1986a). This procedure, which is controlled by the infant, is effective in revealing the early perceptual capacities of young babies (cf.…”