Children's haptic and cross-modal recognition with familiar and unfamiliar objects

Five-year-old children explored multidimensional objects either haptically or visually and then were tested for recognition with target and distracter items in either the same or the alternative modality. In Experiments 1 and 2, haptic, visual, and cross-modal recognition were all nearly perfect with familiar objects; haptic and visual recognition were also excellent with unfamiliar objects, but cross-modal recognition was less accurate. In Experiment 3, cross-modal recognition was also less accurate than within-mode recognition with familiar objects that were members of the same basic-level category. The results indicate that children's haptic recognition is remarkably good, that cross-modal recognition is otherwise constrained, and that cross-modal recognition may be accomplished differently for familiar and unfamiliar objects.