Continuity in tactual-visual cross-modal transfer: infancy to 11 years.
The present study demonstrated that individual differences in cross-modal transfer showed continuity over a 10-year span. Tactual-visual tasks, requiring visual recognition of shapes that had previously been felt but not seen, were given to full-term and preterm children at 2 ages, 1 and 11 years. Cross-modal performance showed a left-hand advantage at 11 years and, for both groups, cross-age correlations were significant when tactual exploration at 11 years was done with the left hand (r = .34-.36). The continuity showed some specificity in that the infant measure did not relate to other types of cross-modal performance at 11 years and was not dependent on aspects of spatial ability involving form perception. This continuity accounted for most of the previously reported relation of infant cross-modal ability to 11-year IQ.
Rose
S A
SA
Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA. srose@aecom.yu.edu
Feldman
J F
JF
Futterweit
L R
LR
Jankowski
J J
JJ
D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011601:Psychophysics; D012016:Reference Values; D013028:Space Perception; D013236:Stereognosis; D014110:Touch; D014163:Transfer, Psychology