Children's haptic and cross-modal recognition with familiar and unfamiliar objects.
Five-year-old children explored multidimensional objects either haptically or visually and then were tested for recognition with target and distractor items in either the same or the alternative modality. In Experiments 1 and 2, haptic, visual, and cross-modal recognition were all nearly with familiar objects; haptic and visual recognition were also excellent with unfamiliar objects, but cross-modal recognition was less accurate. In Experiment 3, cross-modal recognition was also less accurate than within-mode recognition with familiar objects that were members of the same basic-level category. The results indicate that children's haptic recognition is remarkably good, that cross-modal recognition is otherwise constrained, and that cross-modal recognition may be accomplished differently for familiar and unfamiliar objects.
Bushnell
E W
EW
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Massachusetts 02155, USA. ebushnel@emerald.tufts.edu
Baxt
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D001288:Attention; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D013236:Stereognosis