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Abstract: Three experiments were conducted to investigate human newborns’ ability to perceive texture property tactually, either in a cross-modal transfer task or in an intra-modal tactual discrimination task. In Experiment 1, newborns failed to tactually recognize the texture (smooth vs. granular) of flat objects that they had previously seen, when they held flat objects. This failure was mainly due to a lack of intra-modal tactual discrimination between the two objects (Experiment 2). In contrast, Experiment 3 showed that newborns were able to tactually recognize the texture of previously seen surfaces when they held volumetric objects. Taken together, the results suggest that cross-modal transfer of texture from vision to touch stem from a peripheral mechanism, not a central mechanism. Grasping only allows newborns to perceive the texture of volumetric but not flat objects. As a consequence, this study reveals the limits of newborns’ grasping to detect and process information about texture. The results also suggest that more mature exploratory procedures, such as the “lateral motion” procedure exhibited by adults [Lederman, S. J., & Klatzky, R. (1987). Hand movements: A window into haptic object recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 19, 342–368], might be necessary for detecting the texture of flat objects in newborn infants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Two experiments, using habituation/reaction to novelty procedure, were performed to assess human neonates’ ability to process and exchange information about texture (Experiment 1) or shape (Experiment 2) between their hands, without visual control. Forty-eight newborn infants (24 per experiment) received a haptic habituation either with their right or left hand followed by a haptic discrimination test in the opposite hand. Results revealed two patterns of behaviour, according to the object property to be processed. After a tactual habituation to a texture in one hand, newborns held the novel texture longer in the other hand. On the contrary, after a tactual habituation to a shape in one hand, the familiar shape was held longer in the opposite hand. The findings suggest that inter-manual transfer is possible at birth despite of the relative immaturity of the corpus callosum. The discrepancies of performances between object properties are discussed in relation to the possibility of a different haptic processing of texture and shape in the newborn brain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper aims to display the numerous and various competencies of the infant''s hands for processing information about objects shape. Several experiments on infants from birth and up to five months of age using an habituation/dishabituation procedure, intermodal transfer task between touch and vision, and various cognitive tasks revealed that infants might perceive and understand the physical world through their hands without visual control. From birth, infants can habituate to shape and detect discrepancies between shapes equally well with either hand. However, beyond this first level of information processing, as soon as the tasks impose a cognitive load, such as memory, asymmetry between hands and non-reversible transfer between hands and eyes are evident during the first five months. In contrast, when infants abstract information from an event not totally felt or seen, amodal mechanisms underlie haptic and visual knowledge in early infancy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present research addresses the question of the generality of the ability to transfer shape information from one hand to the eyes recently evidenced in human newborns. Using an intersensory paired-preference procedure, we confirmed that newborns can visually recognize the shape of an object that they have previously manipulated with their right hand, out of sight. However, the results revealed that this ability is absent when the left hand is involved. Handedness in cross-modal transfer task is discussed in relation to other behavioral asymmetries in newborns. Taken together, the present research confirms the existence in some conditions of an early fragile ability to extract shape information in a tactual format and transfer it to a visual format, independent of common experience. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

From birth, newborns show a preference for faces talking a native language compared to silent faces. The present study addresses two questions that remained unanswered by previous research: (a) Does the familiarity with the language play a role in this process and (b) Are all the linguistic and paralinguistic cues necessary in this case? Experiment 1 extended newborns’ preference for native speakers to non-native ones. Given that fetuses and newborns are sensitive to the prosodic characteristics of speech, Experiments 2 and 3 presented faces talking native and nonnative languages with the speech stream being low-pass filtered. Results showed that newborns preferred looking at a person who talked to them even when only the prosodic cues were provided for both languages. Nonetheless, a familiarity preference for the previously talking face is observed in the “normal speech” condition (i.e., Experiment 1) and a novelty preference in the “filtered speech” condition (Experiments 2 and 3). This asymmetry reveals that newborns process these two types of stimuli differently and that they may already be sensitive to a mismatch between the articulatory movements of the face and the corresponding speech sounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Two experiments investigated 5-month-old infants’ amodal sensitivity to numerical correspondences between sets of objects presented in the tactile and visual modes. A classical cross-modal transfer task from touch to vision was adopted. Infants were first tactually familiarized with two or three different objects presented one by one in their right hand. Then, they were presented with visual displays containing two or three objects. Visual displays were presented successively (Experiment 1) or simultaneously (Experiment 2). In both experiments, results showed that infants looked longer at the visual display which contained a different number of objects from the tactile familiarization phase. Taken together, the results revealed that infants can detect numerical correspondences between a sequence of tactile and visual stimulation, and they strengthen the hypothesis of amodal and abstract representation of small numbers of objects (two or three) across sensory modalities in 5-month-old infants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]