This study assessed the effects of a vibrating pager for increasing the duration of meal consumption in 3 teenagers with autism who were observed to eat too quickly. Participants were taught to take a bite only when the pager vibrated at predetermined intervals. A reversal design indicated that the vibrating pager successfully increased the total…

Reading is a basic life skill. Unfortunately, in 2007, only 29% of all eighth graders were able to comprehend at or above a proficient reading comprehension level. Sensory learning styles (kinesthetic, tactile, auditory, and visual) affect the way that students prefer to learn and the areas in which they will have difficulty learning. This study…

In this essay, I argue that although philosophers of art have legitimately examined and emphasized the role of sight and hearing in respect to art appreciation, for the most part they have neglected the role of touch. I develop the idea that while sight and hearing form the melody line of art appreciation, touch is its bass line, one that is…

Multisensory peripersonal space develops in a maturational process that is thought to be influenced by early sensory experience. We investigated the role of vision in the effective development of audiotactile interactions in peripersonal space. Early blind (EB), late blind (LB) and sighted control (SC) participants were asked to lateralize…

Watching a rubber hand being stroked by a paintbrush while feeling identical stroking of one's own occluded hand can create a compelling illusion that the seen hand becomes part of one's own body. It has been suggested that this so-called rubber hand illusion (RHI) does not simply reflect a bottom-up multisensory integration process but that the…

Social interactions within virtual communities are often described solely as being online experiences. Such descriptions are limited, for they fail to reference life external to the screen. The terms "virtual" and "real" have a negative connotation for many people and can even be interpreted to mean that something is "false" or "inauthentic."…

Reading is a multi-sensory activity, entailing perceptual, cognitive and motor interactions with whatever is being read. With digital technology, reading manifests itself as being extensively multi-sensory--both in more explicit and more complex ways than ever before. In different ways from traditional reading technologies such as the codex,…

A dynamic touch paradigm in which participants judged the lengths of rods and pipes was used to test the D. M. Jacobs and C. F. Michaels (2007) theory of perceptual learning. The theory portrays perception as the exploitation of a locus on an information manifold and learning as continuous movement across that manifold to a new locus, as guided by…

This study used a single-subject multiple baseline across participants design to evaluate the effectiveness of a modified picture exchange communication system (PECS) teaching protocol with tactile symbols. Three students (two male, one female) aged 12-17 years who had autism and were blind participated in the study. The instructional program…

The purpose of this study was to explore the sensory profile of young children with ASD compared to young children with other developmental delays (DD) at first ASD assessment. Results found that young children with ASD had more tactile and taste/smell sensitivities and difficulties with auditory filtering than young children with other DD.…

By talking with patients in specialized ways and by touching their bodies in specialized ways, doctors may come to some provisional conclusions about the patients' medical conditions and then make some preliminary decisions about what diagnostic tests to have them endure and what medical treatments to initiate. In this article, the author…

Tactile perception depends on the contributions of four psychophysical tactile channels mediated by four corresponding receptor systems. The sensitivity of the tactile channels is determined by detection thresholds that vary as a function of the stimulus frequency. It has been widely reported that tactile thresholds increase (i.e., sensitivity…

Two studies used a new paradigm to examine preschool children's (i.e., 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) word learning across multiple sense modalities. In Study 1 (n = 60), children heard a word for an object that they touched but did not see, while word learning was examined using objects that were seen but not touched. In Study 2 (n = 60), children…

An inexpensive and automated method for presentation of olfactory or tactile stimuli in a two-choice task for rats was implemented with the use of a computer-controlled bidirectional motor. The motor rotated a disk that presented two stimuli of different texture for tactile discrimination, or different odor for olfactory discrimination. Because…

This researcher examined the effects of Traditional versus Tactual/Kinesthetic versus Interactive Whiteboard instruction on short- and long-term word-recall and attitude-test scores of primary students. The sample included 87 children, 45 kindergarten and 42 first-grade students. Participants were 41 males and 46 females from a suburban elementary…