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The dominance of vision is so strong in sighted people that touch is sometimes considered as a minor perceptual modality. However, touch is a powerful tool which contributes significantly to our knowledge on space and objects. Its intensive use by blind people allows them to reach the same levels of knowledge and cognition as their sighted peers. In this book, specialized researchers present the recent state of knowledge about the cognitive functioning of touch. After an analysis of the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of touch, exploratory manual behaviours, intramodal haptic (tactual-kinesthetic) abilities and cross-modal visual-tactual coordination are examined in infants, children and adults, and in non-human primates. These studies concern both sighted and blind persons in order to know whether early visual deprivation modifies the modes of processing space and objects. The last section is devoted to the technical devices favouring the school and social integration of the young blind: Braille reading, use of raised maps and drawings, "sensory substitution" displays, and new technologies of communication adapted for the blind.
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Touching for Knowing
Advances in Consciousness Research Advances in Consciousness Research provides a forum for scholars from different scientific disciplines and fields of knowledge who study consciousness in its multifaceted aspects. Thus the Series will include (but not be limited to) the various areas of cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, linguistics, brain science and philosophy. The orientation of the Series is toward developing new interdisciplinary and integrative approaches for the investigation, description and theory of consciousness, as well as the practical consequences of this research for the individual and society. Series B: Research in progress. Experimental, descriptive and clinical research in consciousness.
Editor Maxim I. Stamenov Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Editorial Board David Chalmers
Earl Mac Cormac
University of Arizona
Duke University
Gordon G. Globus
George Mandler
University of California at Irvine
University of California at San Diego
Ray Jackendoff
John R. Searle
Brandeis University
University of California at Berkeley
Christof Koch
Petra Stoerig
California Institute of Technology
Universität Düsseldorf
Stephen Kosslyn
† Francisco Varela
Harvard University
C.R.E.A., Ecole Polytechnique, Paris
Volume 53 Touching for Knowing: Cognitive psychology of haptic manual perception Edited by Yvette Hatwell, Arlette Streri and Edouard Gentaz
Touching for Knowing Cognitive psychology of haptic manual perception
Edited by
Yvette Hatwell Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble
Arlette Streri Edouard Gentaz Université René Descartes and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Translated (and updated) from: Y. Hatwell, A. Streri and E. Gentaz (2000). Toucher pour connaître. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Touching for knowing : cognitive psychology of haptic manual perception / edited by Yvette Hatwell, Arlette Streri, Edouard Gentaz. p. cm. (Advances in Consciousness Research, issn 1381–589X ; v. 53) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Touch--Psychological aspects. 2. Visual perception. 3. Perceptualmotor processes. I. Hatwell, Yvett