Integrating the Information from Eyes and Hands: A Developmental Account

Questions about the relations among the senses have historic roots (Aristotle, 1941; Brentano, 1977). To understand the mechanisms by which perceptual information is equated or transferred between two or more perceptual subsystems (see J.J. Gibson, 1966) is to arrive at the fundamental questions of attention, perception, and learning. The scope of the problem may account for why theorists have, off and on, taken up the problem since the time of ancient Greece (see Boring, 1942). Here, my aims will be less ambitious. I will restrict myself to a few topics that deal with the relation between vision and haptics (active grasping and touching) from a developmental perspective. I intend to examine what we know about intersensory abilities during infancy and early childhood, because many of the issues quite naturally point us in that direction.