Seeing, Reaching, Touching: The Relations Between Vision and Touch in InfancySeeing, reaching, and touching are simple, automatic, and fundamental acts for an adult, but they place formidable demands on the perceptual and motor capacities of an infant. In this book, Arlette Streri investigates the relationship between tactile and visual systems in infancy and introduces an original theory of the visual-touching mechanism in babies, a precocious ability that is central to cognitive development. Since antiquity, philosophers have asked whether seeing and touching are separate systems or are unified at birth. Contemporary psychologists approach the question from two perspectives: either they consider motor ability as the integrated link between the senses or they study the relations between the information gained from two or more sense modalities. Streri demonstrates that, although current research confirms both perspectives, the results are insufficient to provide an understanding of the conditions necessary for the establishment of a unity of the two systems. Streri brings together a wealth of research on the sensorimotor and perceptual capacity of infants. Against the background of a spectrum of developmental and cognitive theories, she argues that an early developing coordination of vision and touch, and of perception and action, underlies the infant's exchanges with his or her surroundings. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Theoretical perspectives and hypotheses | 12 |
Manual approach to a visual target as evidence | 43 |
Copyright | |
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2-month-old babies action amodal amodal perception appears babies aged birth Bower Bushnell centimetres cognitive component cube demonstrated DiFranco dimensions discrimination distal stimulus environment existence experiment experimental exploration of objects failure shape familiar object function Gottfried grasp reflex grasp the object habituation haptic Hofsten hypothesis infants integration intermodal transfer interpretation intramodal J.J. Gibson manipulation Meltzoff Milhet months of age motor activity motor system Mounoud movement multimodal exploration neonate neonate's objects presented observed obtained organization perceived perceptual systems perspective Piaget posture prehensile prehension prehension-vision coordination procedure properties of objects proprioceptive reaching behaviour receptors reflex representation response reveal role sensory modalities sensory receptors sensory systems situation spatial specific stimulus Streri and Pêcheux tactile exploration tactile modality tactile system test phase theory trajectory unity vision and touch visual control visual exploration visual modality visual object visual perception visual system visual target weeks of age