An Exploratory Behavioral Study in Children of Four Years of Age on the Hypothesis of a Two Streams System in Touch Perception and Language Development

Abstract

A two streams system seems to exist for tactile perception. We asked kindergarten children to identify (semantic) and describe the function of grasped unseen instruments of their daily life (fork, knife, spoon, brush, toothbrush, pencil, and scissor), and then, to simulate its use (pragmatic). The capacity to describe the function of the set of instruments was significantly superior to that of identifying them by name, although there was a significant direct association between identification and description of the function in the responses to the set of instruments. The simulation of the instrument function was of two types: (i) use―the child simulated how the instrument is grasped and used; and (ii) incorporation―the child simulated the function of the instrument with her/his own hand. The results support the hypothesis of a two streams tactile system (semantic and pragmatic), and that kindergarten children have the ability to incorporate functional properties of instruments of their daily life, probably as a support for language development.