Intermodal transfer of spatial arrangement of the component parts of an object in infants aged 4-5 months

Infants' tactual discriminative abilities and intermodal transfer were investigated in two research studies which endeavoured to answer two questions: can infants aged 4-5 months process and discriminate tactually information about different spatial arrangements of elements of an object, in the absence of visual control, and secondly, can they transfer this information from touch to vision? Two experiments were conducted involving a habituation procedure and a procedure which tests reaction to novelty. Infants were found to be able to discriminate tactually between different spatial arrangements of the three elements of an object (experiment 1), and to transfer this information to the visual mode (experiment 2). These findings constitute new data on intermodal functioning in babies.