Preschoolers who explore objects haptically often fail to recognize those objects in subsequent visual tests. This suggests that children may represent qualitatively different information in vision and haptics, and/or that children's haptic perception may be poor. Seventy-two children from 2 ½ to 5 years and 20 adults explored unfamiliar objects either haptically or visually, then chose a visual match from among three test objects, each matching the exemplar on one perceptual dimension. All age groups chose shape-based matches after visual exploration. Five-year-olds and adults also chose shape-based matches after haptic exploration, but younger children did not match consistently in this condition. Certain hand movements performed by children during haptic exploration reliably predicted shape-based matches but occurred at very low frequencies. Thus, younger children's difficulties with haptics-to-vision information transfer appeared to stem from their failure to use their hands to obtain reliable haptic information about objects.The use of perceptual information obtained in one modality (e.g., haptics) to perform a task in another modality (e.g., vision) involves inter-modal information transfer. Inter-modal transfer allows for inter-sensory predictions -for example, anticipating what an object will look like given that you have touched but not yet seen it. Perceptual features that can be apprehended only in one modality -color, odor, and temperature -will clearly not be useful in tasks requiring inter-modal transfer. However, information about object properties like shape, texture, and rhythm can be obtained in more than one modality (Lewkowicz, 1994). Such information can also be obtained in one modality and then used for a task in a different modality. The fact that inter-modal transfer of perceptual information is possible implies that representations built from input in one sensory modality are accessible to multiple perceptual modalities (E. J. Gibson, 1969; J. Gibson, 1966).Adults appear to have no difficulty accessing novel information gathered in one perceptual modality for use in a second (e.g., Abravanel,

Adults vary their haptic exploratory behavior reliably with variation both in the sensory input and in the task goals. Little is known about the development of these connections between perceptual goals and exploratory behaviors. Thirty-six children 3, 4, and 5 years of age and 20 adults completed a haptic intra-modal match-to-sample task. Participants were instructed to feel the shape, texture, rigidity, or weight of a sample object, and then asked to find which of three test objects matched the sample on that specific property. Hand movements were examined to determine whether children produced the same exploratory procedures while gathering perceptual information about each property as adults who searched for the same kind of information. Children demonstrated that they had good haptic abilities in two ways: they matched the sample objects on the specified perceptual dimension at near ceiling levels, and they produced the same hand movement patterns to find the same properties as adults.

No abstract

Abstract. Situational awareness is a concept increasingly used in aircraft accident investigation reports. We analyzed 94 general aviation accidents in which situational awareness was mentioned by the National Transportation Safety Board investigator to determine factors that are significantly more often associated with fatality. We found a consistent use of the situational awareness concept, mainly applied to situations in which aircraft inadvertently collided with each other, with other man-made objects, and with various kinds of terrain. A significantly higher proportion of fatal accidents occurred during nighttime, in instrument meteorological conditions, or low visibility conditions. In addition, flights occurring during the cruise phase or in combination with spatial or geographical disorientation proved most often fatal.

No abstract