Education involves the engagement of the full range of the senses in the accomplishment of tasks and the learning of knowledge and skills. However both in pedagogical practices and in the process of educational research, there has been a tendency to privilege the visual. To explore these issues, detailed sensory ethnographic fieldwork was…

As people age, they naturally experience sensory, perceptual, and cognitive changes. Many of these changes necessitate adaptations in designing programs for older adults. Choral singing is an activity that has many potential benefits for older adults, yet the rehearsal environment, presentation style, and content of material presented may need to…

Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower than to unrepeated stimuli. Intriguingly, the effect sizes of tactile NP were much larger than the effect sizes for visual NP. We analyzed whether the large tactile NP effect is just a side effect of the…

"Chills" (frisson manifested as goose bumps or shivers) have been used in an increasing number of studies as indicators of emotions in response to music (e.g., Craig, 2005; Guhn, Hamm, & Zentner, 2007; McCrae, 2007; Panksepp, 1995; Sloboda, 1991). In this study we present evidence that chills can be induced through aural, visual, tactile, and…

Seventy-three children with visual impairments aged 2-10 and their parents participated in a project that examined the children's interest in and exploration of tactile graphics. The parents reported that the children's interest in and conceptual understanding of the project's tactile workbook were high and that the children explored the…

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…