The haptic abilities of the human newborn

Abstract

Abstract. How do human babies gain knowledge by touch? This review presents information on the haptic abilities of human newborns and preterm infants which sheds light on this question. How do full-term and preterm newborns perceive information and form a perceptual representation of objects extracted from the hands alone? How do full-term newborns transfer this information to vision in an intermodal process? Using a habituation/dishabituation procedure, experiments have revealed that preterm and full-term newborns are able to discriminate object shapes in the manual, as well as in the visual modalities for full-term newborns. These abilities are a prerequisite for the establishment of relations between haptic and visual sensory information in cross-modal transfer tasks. We discuss several experiments performed using an intersensory successive preference procedure which provide evidence for cross-modal recognition from touch to vision from birth in full-term newborns. The links, however, are limited, partial, and not always reciprocal. We discuss these results in the light of recent theories on visual-haptic links.