Examines the ability to differentiate appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking in tactile modality among a total of 92 children aged two-four years in three studies. The results indicate that three-year-olds find tactile appearance-reality and Level Two perspective-taking tasks easier than visual ones. (RJC)

A course in non-visual art offered as part of a general education requirement has both blind and blindfolded students exploring aspects of art, primarily tactile and auditory, usually de-emphasized in art education. (MSE)

Kinnealey reports on a study comparing tactile functions of 30 learning-disabled and 30 normal eight-year-olds as measured by the Southern California Sensory Integration Tests and the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery. Reliability and validity of the two measures were examined. Results showed a significant difference between the tactile…

Six teenagers with visual impairments were given a guided tour of an historic site in Belgium and then questioned concerning their spatial representation of the site and remembered information. Analysis revealed that orally presented information did not compensate for visual cues. Findings led to development of a scale model of the site adapted…

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.…

In this systematic review of research, the author analyzes studies of neural cortical activation, brain plasticity, and braille reading. The conclusions regarding the brain's plasticity and ability to reorganize are encouraging for individuals with degenerative eye conditions or late-onset blindness because they indicate that the brain can make…

Two experiments investigated 5-month-old infants' amodal sensitivity to numerical correspondences between sets of objects presented in the tactile and visual modes. A classical cross-modal transfer task from touch to vision was adopted. Infants were first tactually familiarized with two or three different objects presented one by one in their…

This study evaluated variables that determined the safety of 15 cane users who were using the touch technique. The results showed that none of the walkers used a touch technique as described and recommended in the literature, that the detection of obstacles was related mainly to the height of the cane tip during the sweep, and that the early…

This article describes how the quilts fashioned by Joanne Marian of Boswell have helped children with exceptional needs. Marian's quilts, which are freely given, are created using donated scraps of texture-rich fabrics, patterns, and embellishments to heighten the intensity of tactile detail for exceptional children who may be visually impaired or…

In this article, we examine the extent to which children with autism and children with learning difficulties can be discriminated from their responses to different patterns of sensory stimuli. Using an adapted version of the Short Sensory Profile (SSP), sensory processing was compared in 34 children with autism to 33 children with typical…

Criticizes studies of egocentric development in children using cutaneous perception procedures. Also questions study contribution to the understanding of the development of decentering. (Author/SDH)

A battery of assessments to determine the potential contribution of tactual aids to the acoustic perception and speech identification of young deaf children was developed. The tasks were developed so that they could be implemented with standard audiometric equipment and applied to subjects of varying age and to different types of tactual aids.…

The study examined modality effects in the learning of Braille through providing a variety of either study or test trials in either the visual or haptic modalities. Subjects were 144 right handed college students. Results supported previous experiments demonstrating the visual modality superior to the combined visual-haptic or the haptic modality…