VIDBE-Q Volume 64 Issue 4
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the child to use his or her hands in a variety of ways (holding, poking,
squeezing) and to be able to categorize objects in new ways.
In contrast, by focusing on the belief that concept and tactual
understanding is innate, some cognitive development researchers (Carey,
2009; Streri, 2003) support the theory of evolutional acquisition, or
nativism. Gibson and Walker (1984) challenged the maturational process
by arguing that tactual discrimination of objects does not happen because
of the environment or the individual but occurs due to the interaction of
both. Information is not out there in the environment waiting to be found.
Instead, it is a learning process that emerges as a child actively engages
with her surroundings. A nativist learning theory assumes that sensory and
conceptual representations are present at birth, and that as the child
experiences mental representations though object manipulations and
language exposure they develop an understanding (Carey, 2009). Very
young infants of three to five months have been shown to differentiate
between textures and contours through active mouthing and limited hand
explorations (Gibson & Walker, 1984; Schellingerhout et al., 2005). As
neuro-imaging improves, the nativist theory of learning is supported by
more recent studies that argue the brain does not acquire sensory
information in a cross-modal manner or using one sense to make up for
