title: Impaired visual size-discrimination in children with movement disorders.
abstract: Multisensory integration of spatial information occurs late in childhood, at around eight years (Gori, Del Viva, Sandini, & Burr, 2008). For younger children, the haptic system dominates size discrimination and vision dominates orientation discrimination: the dominance may reflect sensory calibration, and could have direct consequences on children born with specific sensory disabilities. Here we measure thresholds for visual discrimination of orientation and size in children with movement disorders of upper limbs. Visual orientation discrimination was very similar to the age-matched typical children, but visual size discrimination thresholds were far worse, in all eight individuals with early-onset movement disorder. This surprising and counterintuitive result is readily explained by the cross-sensory calibration hypothesis: when the haptic sense is unavailable for manipulation, it cannot be readily used to estimate size, and hence to calibrate the visual experience of size: visual discrimination is subsequently impaired. This complements a previous study showing that non-sighted children have reduced acuity for haptic orientation, but not haptic size, discriminations (Gori, Sandini, Martinoli, & Burr, 2010). Together these studies show that when either vision or haptic manipulation is impaired, the impairment also impacts on complementary sensory systems that are calibrated by that one.
authors.affiliation: Robotics, Brain & Cognitive Sciences Department, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy. monica.gori@iit.it
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gori
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tinelli
authors.forename: Giulio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sandini
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cioni
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Burr
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009069:Movement Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012858:Size Perception; D014796:Visual Perception