Everyday environments, even small regions within reach, vary dramatically in terms of material composition. Adapting one's manual behavior to such transitions can be considered to be an important element of skilled action. To investigate the origins of this ability, we presented 8-month-olds (n=24) and 10-month-olds (n=24) hard or soft objects on…

This reflective essay describes the author's experiences as an observer in a behaviorist infant classroom. The author developed four categories of practice to describe what happened in the behaviorist infant room: (1) curricular focus on training typically developing infants to meet typical developmental milestones, (2) the use of highly…

Learn how to safely incorporate touch in the early childhood setting and how to prepare children to confront troubling touch-related situations that may arise outside your setting. Following Acknowledgments, the book includes the following six chapters: (1) Taking a Look at Touch; (2) The Importance of Touch in Development and Learning; (3)…

This exploratory study aimed to investigate elements involved in decision making in team handball live situations and to provide coaches and educators with teaching recommendations. The study was positioned within the framework of the situated-action paradigm of which two aspects were of particular interest for this project: (a) the relationship…

In this observational case study, a 13-year old boy, Carlo, who was born completely blind, was invited to explore and identify, a set of raised-line pictures without receiving feedback about the accuracy of his identification. He was then asked to explain, verbally or by drawing, why he believed that the names he suggested accurately identified…

Background: For many years, and especially since Waynbaum and Wallon, psychology and psychopathology have dealt with cognitive perception, but have had little to do with the affective qualities of perception. Our aim was to study the influence of the sensory environment on people with autism. Method: Several experiments were carried out using…

All babies communicate. It is through communication that relationships are formed and sustained. All parents must learn how to interpret and respond to their baby's communications in order to form the bonds that become the foundation for development. When a child has both a visual impairment and hearing loss, however, it may be more difficult to…

Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts--she has also been legally blind for 14 years. Through her partnership with the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the oldest K-12 school for the visually impaired in the United States,…

Art work with clay is discussed. (CK)

The study of infant communication during mother-infant interactions has largely focused on infants' distal behaviours, while neglecting their more proximal behaviours, such as touch. Yet, touch is an important modality through which infants and mothers communicate; it is also a vital means through which infants self-regulate and explore their…

This article analyzes the attraction of stimulation produced by a visuotactile sensory substitution device, which was designed to provide optical information to infants who are blind via a tactile modality. The device was first tested on sighted infants, to demonstrate that this type of stimulation on the abdomen is pleasant and rewarding in…

Previous research has demonstrated that extinction in the form of re-presentation of expelled bites is an effective intervention for treating food expulsion. The current study compared the effectiveness of re-presenting expulsions with a spoon to re-presenting with a Nuk[R] brush for a 4-year-old boy with a feeding disorder. Fewer expulsions were…

From children's viewpoints, what they experience in the world is what the world is like--for everyone. "What do others experience with their senses when they are in the same situation?" is a question that young children can explore by collecting data as they use a "feely box," or take a "sensory walk." There are many ways to focus the children's…

The authors investigated the mechanical basis of length perception through dynamic touch using specially designed rods in which the various moments of mass distribution (mass, static moment, and rotational inertia) were varied independently. In a series of 4 experiments, exploration style and rod orientation were manipulated such that the relative…

This study shows that in a novel task--bimanual haptic tracking--neurologically normal human adults can move their 2 hands independently for extended periods of time with little or no training. Participants lightly touched buttons whose positions were moved either quasi-randomly in the horizontal plane by 1 or 2 human drivers (Experiment 1), in…