Cite as:
Streri A, Gentaz E, 2008, "Haptic perception of space in infancy: influence of visual cues" Perception 37 ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 91

Haptic perception of space in infancy: influence of visual cues

A Streri, E Gentaz

The present research examined the influence of visual contextual cues on the manual discrimination of spatial orientations in 5-month-old infants. Different visual contextual cues were proposed during the haptic discrimination task: congruent-informative, noncongruent-informative or noninformative. A familiarization/reaction to novelty procedure was used in three experiments. In Experiment 1, a congruent-informative visual context (alternate black and white stripes tilted to 20°-left) was present and a haptic discrimination between a 20°-left rod and a 30°-left rod was observed. In Experiment 2, the visual context cues (black dots) were noninformative, and infants could not discriminate these two oblique rods. In Experiment 3, the presence of a noncongruent visual context as in Experiment 1 disturbed the gravitational vertical perception usually observed: infants could not discriminate the vertical rod from the 10°-left rod. This showed that only the informative (congruent and noncongruent) visual contextual cues influenced the haptic discrimination of orientations infants. The results are discussed in relation with the models of multisensorial integration.

These web-based abstracts are provided for ease of seaching and access, but certain aspects (such as as mathematics) may not appear in their optimum form. For the final published version of this abstract, please see
ECVP 2008 Abstract Supplement (complete) size: 2329 Kb

[Publisher's note: The abstracts in this year's ECVP supplement have been published with virtually no copy editing by Pion, thus the standards of grammar and style may not match those of regular Perception articles.]