VIDBE-Q Volume 64 Issue 4
43
The cutaneous system develops first in utero, and early in infancy the
more active "haptic" skills are acquired. Through the use of habituation
research adapted for haptic procedures, studies show that very young
babies can determine contour (Streri, 2003) and can discriminate texture
before shape (Schellingerhout et al., 1997). Streri (2003) found that
"infants adjust or adapt their activities to object properties in order to extract
the most pertinent information" (p. 59). Recent neural imaging research by
Metzoff et al. (2018) has demonstrated that even 60-day-old infants
respond consistently to tactual stimulation with the lip, hand and foot. This
study is relevant to the field of visual impairment as infants at this age are
not independently reaching, ambulating or speaking, and are not visually
aware of their lips.
Research in the area of movement based haptic exploration of the
young child with visual impairment is limited, but Schellingerhout,
Smitsman, and Cox (2005) show that (a) both hands move together in
synchrony; (b) the hands show a preference for textures that are
increasingly dense; and (c) once a complex texture is found, movement
patterns are slowed for further exploration.
As infants move from using their mouths to their hands in effective
exploration, the work of Lederman and Klatsky (2009) "has demonstrated a
