Network models for haptic perception

作者：Millar S^*

来源：Infant Behavior and Development, 2005, 28(3): 250-265.

DOI：10.1016/j.infbeh.2005.05.003

• haptic perception
• network models
• blind children

Haptic perception involves connections between touch and movement, depending on skeletal and muscle developments, and on orienting and spatial processes, which relate to vision in normal development. It is argued that the behavioural systems, and associated reciprocal and changing neural processing streams that connect the relevant cortical and sub-cortical systems, require description in terms of interrelated networks.
Evidence on intersensory bases for haptic and visual shape perception, briefly reviewed here, also shows developments within and between domains, which suggest reciprocal effects that are described better in terms of processing circuits than by arrow-like representations of neural nets. Task demands affect the activation of processing circuits. A common process in haptic as well as visual shape perception involves relating constituent features spatially by reference to each other.
Haptic perception without vision foregrounds inputs from touch and movement. It also tends to elicit spatial processing based on body-centred reference cues rather than on reference cues from the external sources. But spatial coding based on external reference cues occurs also, if the environmental cues are familiar, or if cues from external surrounds are explicitly provided in haptic conditions. Descriptions of changes in processing circuits have to include the time and length of blinding, the extent of haptic experience, the information that is available from other sources, including longer term knowledge and current task conditions. It is concluded that combinations of these factors determine the patterns of activation in the processing networks, and describe how shape and spatial processing take place in haptic perception in the absence of visual stimulation.

• 出版日期2005-9