Investigated the relative effects of developmental level and domain-specific knowledge on 4- to 9-year-olds' ability to identify and make similarity decisions about objects based on haptic or tactile information. Found that older children explored models more exhaustively, found more differentiating features, and made fewer errors than younger…

Among 294 children of three to eight years, tactual oddity learning increased gradually with age. The finding of bidirectional cross-modal transfer of oddity learning supported the suggestion that such transfer occurs when training and transfer oddity tasks share a common vehicle dimension. Results are considered consistent with the view that…

The developmental change from global toward dimensional classifications, usually observed in vision, was investigated in haptics with stimuli varying according to their size and roughness. Results indicated that, although more overall similarity classifications were observed in children than in adults, this kind of classification was never…

Reports two studies of infant exploration. In the first, age and characteristics of the object stimuli influenced 6-, 9- and 12-month-olds who manipulated a series of objects. Results of the second study suggested that different kinds of manipulation are used to explore changes in shape, texture, and weight. (Author/CB)

Results are discussed in terms of cognitive growth, the psychoanalytic notion of ambivalence, the role of stimulus context in eliciting laughter or fear, and a possible adaptive, stimulus-maintaining function of laughter. (Authors)

Explored in 2 studies 3- and 4-year-olds' understanding that the 5 senses can each lead to different types of knowledge. Found that 3-year-olds performed significantly poorer than 4-year-olds on all tasks, suggesting a marked transition in children's ability to recognize the origin of their modality-specific knowledge between 3 and 4 years.…

A study involving 29 sighted and 22 blind children in grades 3-12 was conducted to determine whether there are grade, sex, and handedness group differences in texture preferences and whether such preferences effect discrimination accuracy. (SBH)

The study tested the existence of communication between visual and haptic senses with 3- and 5-year-old children. Major finding: only visual-haptic training improved performance on the haptic indentification test. Apparently there was no transfer across sense modalities. (ST)

Purpose of this investigation is to develop a method of measuring tactile sensation regarding the texture, size, and shape of objects (stereognosis) in the hand of normal two- to four-year-old children. (Author)

Young adults and older subjects were given the classical task of the discrimination of lifted weights. The present study did not show older people with higher response criteria than the young. Caution on the part of older people may be specific to certain classes of task. (Author)

Examines the haptic judgments of an L figure across the ages of 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 20 years. Significant differences in the amount of haptic illusion were found. (MP)

Children either saw, were told about, or felt the contents of a toy tunnel. They were asked what was in the tunnel and how they knew the contents. Three year olds had difficulty identifying the sources of their knowledge. Questions that involved inference proved to be especially difficult for them. (BC)

Two studies using the concepts and research techniques of J. Piaget were conducted to compare cognitive processes in 45 blind children (2-to-12-years-old) and a random sample of sighted children. (SB)

Although a considerable amount is known about the development of object manipulation during the 1st year, less is known about how infants manually explore surfaces and relate objects to surfaces. To address these issues, 60 infants (20 each at 6, 8, and 10 months of age) were presented hard and soft objects on tabletop surfaces, which varied in…