Outlines a basic structure for assessing the needs of individuals with visual impairments and setting up a system for labeling and marking that will meet those needs. Steps for organizing items, encouraging the development of sensory abilities, and selecting visual, tactual, or auditory systems are described. (CR)

Eight tactile-kinesthetic indices and 27 cognitive-ability and mental-speed measures were administered to 195 college students and community members. Results suggest that tactile-kinesthetic abilities share much with broad visualization and fluid intelligence, little with crystallized intelligence, and differential relationships with speed related…

A follow-up study examined the effects of different tactile aids on tasks of visual speech reading in 14 adults with severe hearing impairments. Compared with speech reading alone, tactile aids impaired sentence-based speech reading at first, although performance improved with training. No effects of vibrotactile aids or training were obtained for…

In the West we are accustomed to thinking of knowledge largely on the basis of vision, which is distant and objective, a perspective that posits the separation of mind and body. In contrast, theories of touch pose a proximinal understanding of knowledge production. It informs how we experience body knowledge as encounters between beings. Body…

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…

In their specialized schooling, blind children are now frequently presented with raised line figures and maps. However, there is still much to do in evaluating the cognitive effects of training using these displays. The purpose of this research is to determine if the level of expertise in the haptic exploration, and the perception of the raised…

This article outlines two compatible models of planning and implementing programs for students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The Ziggurat Model begins the process with an assessment of student strengths and concerns related specifically to ASD and identifies interventions across five tiers that match these strengths and concerns: (a)…

This study examined the relationship between auditory, visual, touch, and oral sensory dysfunction in autism and their relationship to multisensory dysfunction and severity of autism. The Sensory Profile was completed on 104 persons with a diagnosis of autism, 3 to 56 years of age. Analysis showed a significant correlation between the different…

Whether maternal touching of the infant while speaking to him or her about a stranger facilitates or interferes with social referencing is investigated in this study. Thirty-three 10-month-olds received positive or neutral nonverbal messages when their mothers spoke to them about a stranger. Infants whose mothers did not touch them while speaking…

Two studies examined the effects of handedness on braille learning. Experiment 1 featured 64 sighted undergraduates at North Carolina State University, all of whom were right-handed and had no experience with braille. Results revealed that females outperformed males, but that, contrary to expectation, no significant effects of handedness were…

Investigated were the effects of stimulus complexity on habituation of the skin conductance response component of the orienting responses in 16 nonretarded and retarded male adults. (Author)

This document briefly critiques some of the basic theories upon which art education studies are often based, summarizes the research generalizations that may be made at this time, and reviews pertinent experiments that hold promise for future research. The Haptic-Visual Theory of Perceptual Development (Lowenfeld, 1957), the Differentiation Theory…

This paper presents background information, an introductory statement of theoretical positions, and brief abstracts of research papers from a symposium on the functional specialization of cerebral hemispheres in infants and children. According to one view of the development of cerebral specialization, the two hemispheres are initially…

A 2 (touch-no touch) x 2 (sex of confederate) x 2 (sex of subject) between subjects design tested the affective and evaluative consequences of receiving an interpersonal touch in a Professional/Functional situation. It was found that the affective and evaluative response to touch was uniformly positive for females, who felt affectively more…