This article considers the touching, or rather, not touching, of children and young people in professional settings. Some have argued that many schools and other childcare environments are becoming "no touch" zones. Formal guidelines in the UK are centrally concerned with "child protection" issues, and "force and…

In comparison with full-term infants, seven-month-old high-risk preterm infants exhibited deficits in visual recognition memory and in the ability to recruit, sustain, and shift attention. (RH)

Results of a program using vibrotactile and electrocutaneous vocoder in speech reception and production training with 13 profoundly hearing impaired Ss (3-6 years old) showed progress in speech communication not seen prior to training with tactual vocoders. (CL)

The study explored the concept of space through the tactual discrimination of household objects in 48 4-to-7-year-old blind, partially sighted, and sighted children. (PHR)

Focuses on the use of movement in the music classroom to teach young children. Addresses the benefits of using movement and includes guidelines and teaching suggestions for incorporating movement into the music classroom. Offers a sample lesson for lower/middle elementary and middle/upper elementary students. (CMK)

A study compared the effectiveness of two methods of teaching clinical breast examination: standardized teaching from family medicine faculty or well women teachers (n=54 first-year students) and unstandardized teaching during clinical rotations (n=70 second-year students). The standardized-teaching group had more consistent techniques, higher…

Notes that many activities in early childhood classrooms offer opportunities for sensory learning that may be overlooked unless specific attention is directed toward these areas of learning. Suggests that teachers can increase these opportunities by using "feely" boxes or bags, which allow children to touch an object without seeing it. Various…

Discusses the sensory systems of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and equilibrium as tools of children's mental development. (MKR)

This article outlines historical, socio-cultural, and research information that attests to the fundamental relationship between touch and child development. It describes applications including touch therapies with very low-birthweight infants, with fragile premature infants, and with infants of depressed mothers. (Contains extensive references.)…

We describe a perceptual experiment that we have successfully used in Research Methods classes. Students attempt to identify a series of simple cookie cutter shapes using only the fingers and hands (haptic perception). Students read archival studies that have used this procedure, identify confounds, generate and test alternate hypotheses, and…

This study examined the effect of incorporating a visuo-haptic and haptic (tactual-kinaesthetic) exploration of letters in a training designed to develop phonemic awareness, knowledge of letters and letter/sound correspondences, on 5-year-old children's understanding and use of the alphabetic principle. Three interventions, which differed in the…

Describes the activities a teacher used at summer camp to acquaint blind children with nature. Discusses the similarities and differences between blind children and children with sight. (RL)

Describes two experiments that examined whether the amplitude of the human eyeblink by a mild tap between the eyebrows can be increased if a brief tone is presented simultaneously with the tap and how these effects change from newborn infants to adults. (HOD)

Determines whether early hemispheric differences exist in tactual processing by testing infants and preschoolers on six cross-modal tasks. Results are the first to demonstrate a left-hand superiority for information processing in children as young as two years. (Author/AS)