Different materials that are used in manufacturing long cane shafts were assessed for their ability to transmit vibration and their sensitivity to tactile information, flexibility, and durability. It was found that the less flexible a cane shaft is, the better it transmits vibrations that are useful for discriminating surface textures and that…

Using a single-subject alternating treatments reversal design, the effects of three conditions, tactile stimulation, auditory stimulation, and choice of the two, were compared on the math story problem solving of elementary students with attention problems. Students attempted and solved slightly more problems and engaged in fewer off-task…

This research was conducted to determine the effects of traditional instruction versus Contract Activity Packaged (CAP) versus Programmed Sequenced Learning (PLS) versus Tactual Resources (TR) on the achievement and attitudes of 32 second-year undergraduate teacher education majors enrolled in two classes of a required child-study course at a…

The study was undertaken to evaluate the nature of sensory dysfunction in persons with autism. The cross-sectional study examined auditory, visual, oral, and touch sensory processing, as measured by the Sensory Profile, in 104 persons with a diagnosis of autism, 3-56 years of age, gender- and age-matched to community controls. Persons with autism…

Based on a paper presented at the National Convention of the American Cleft Palate Association (1968).

Four major types of interaction of stimulus dimensions based on perceptual research are described: integral, configural, separable, and asymmetric separable. Implications of these interactions for concept and choice processes are discussed. (Author/DEP)

Infants aged 3, 5, and 7 months were shown solid objects and comparable intangible images of objects both within and beyond possible arm's reach. The infants' emotional reactions and reaching behavior in the presence of the image stimuli were found to be very similar to their responses to the solid objects. (Author/JMB)

As part of an ongoing evaluation of the Tactile Vocoder, a device that allows the acoustic waveform to be felt as a vibrational pattern on the skin, two prelingually profoundly deaf teenagers reached criterion on a 50-word vocabulary (live voice, single speaker) after 28.5 and 24.0 hours of training. (Author/DB)

The linguistic abilities of three adult deaf-blind subjects who acquired language through the Tadoma method (involves monitoring a speaker's articulatory motions by placing a hand on his face) were examined. The subjects' English language abilities were excellent, suggesting that the tactile sense is adequate in highly trained Tadoma users in…

Five male learning disabled students (eight to 13 years old) learned more words using the nonpreferred hand in tactile processing to remediate reading than with the preferred hand. (CL)

Signs selected from lists used in studies with mentally retarded and autistic children and previously rated for visual iconicity were presented tactilely to 13 blind adults and adolescents. Visual and tactile ratings were found to be very similar across blind, deaf, and hearing-sighted adults and hearing-sighted children. (Author/CL)

Examination of hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities of 10 language impaired and 10 language normal children revealed that language impaired Ss performed significantly more poorly than controls on haptic recognition tasks and on a portion of the discrimination learning task. No differences were found between the groups' concept…

Presents the results of a study concluding that poorer oral stereognostic skills may not be indicative of poor speech performance. (TO)