Visual-touch perceptual equivalence for shape information in children and adults

Abstract

Although there has been substantial developmental research which has compared shape information processing performance under visual and touch conditions, there has been little work that bears on the shape attributes that are routinely employed, or on the similarity between shape attributes employed by adults and those employed by children. The present research was carried out to investigate the visual-touch perceptual equivalence of young children, using multidimensional scaling techniques, and to compare the visual and touch perceptual structures of this age group with those of adults. The results provide evidence for adult-like perceptions of shape among 6-year-olds, in terms of both the patterns of interstimulus similarities and the shape attributes attended to by children using each modality. In addition, it was found that children have somewhat more visual-touch perceptual equivalence than adults do.From the earliest philosophical interests to the most recent physiological efforts, comparisons among the sensory modalities have served as an organizing and unifying theme of perceptual data and theory. There have been three major expressions of this theme. Perceptual equivalence research involves the comparison of the representations of stimuli and/or particular stimulus attributes formed via different modalities (e.g., Marks, 1978). Examinations of intersensory integration have explored the processes and representational results from the combination of information from two or more modalities into a single representation of a stimulus (e.g., Abravanel, 1981), often one that is richer or more complete than the representation from any single modality (Klatzky, Lederman, & Reed, 1987). The third approach has involved comparisons of intra-and cross-modal performance on various discrimination and/or recognition tasks. An important topic in the discussion of and research on these issues has been the comparison of visual and touch processing of shape information and the integration of this information under the demands of cross-modal matching and discrimination tasks (e.g., Jones, 1981). This interest in visual-touch comparisons of shape perception may be driven (as it is for me) by the almost unique opportunity to present the same stimulus via two modalities that can potentially process a large number of the same physical attributes of that stimulus.The present research was designed to assess the visualtouch perceptual equivalence in children's processing of three-dimensional forms, following a procedure that has produced interesting results in studies involving adults (Garbin, 1988;Garbin & Bernstein, 1984). This proceCorrespondence should be addressed to Calvin P. Garbin, Department of Psychology. 209 Burnett Hall. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308. 271dure involves the analysis of the holistic shape-similarity judgments of three-dimensional shapes by multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques that allow the recovery of the attributes upon which the judgments were based. The research was prompted by tw...

The visual and haptic perception of natural object shape

“…In addition, there are now a wide variety of studies in which many different methods have been used (tests of viewpointdependence/independence,cross-modal priming, multidimensional scaling, etc.) that document important similarities between vision and touch for object recognition and/or the perception of shape (Easton, Greene, & Srinivas, 1997;Garbin, 1990;Garbin & Bernstein, 1984;Newell, Ernst, Tjan, & Bülthoff, 2001;Reales & Ballesteros, 1999; see also Marks, 1978).…”

Haptic form perception: Relative salience of local and global features

“…More recently, Garbin and Bernstein (1984) had subjects sort 24 nonrepresentative forms either visually or haptically according to similarity of shape and obtained comparable 2-D multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions for which the principal dimensions were size and shape. Such visual-tactile perceptual equivalence appears to be even more prominent in children than in adults (Garbin, 1990). Taken together, these findings suggest that touch and vision may share common processing mechanisms or, as Gibson (1966) noted, that "touch and vision in combination often yield a redundant, doubly guaranteed input of information" (p. 53).…”

Metric assumptions are neither necessary nor sufficient to describe similarities

“…Agreement between patterns derived from visual and haptic perceptual data has also been reported (Garbin 1990). Agreement between patterns derived from visual and haptic perceptual data has also been reported (Garbin 1990).…”