Department of Developmental Neuroscience, IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Pisa, Italy.
Pediatric Ophthalmology Unit, Meyer Children's Hospital, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Vision Res. 2021 Jan;178:12-17. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2020.06.008. Epub 2020 Oct 15.
It is well known how early visual experience is critical for the development of multisensory processing abilities, and for this reason an early vision impairment could hinder the transfer of different sensory information during the exploration and recognition of the surrounding environment. Recently, we verified that visuo-haptic transfer for object recognition emerges early in typically developing children but matures slowly during the school-age period. Subsequently we verified the presence of a slower trend of development in unisensory and multisensory skills in children with early abnormal motor and sensory experiences due to brain lesions. Now, we investigated unimodal visual information, unimodal haptic information and visuo-haptic information transfer in children with a diagnosis of low-vision, due to congenital visual impairment. Unimodal and bimodal processes for object recognition were explored in 11 children with low-vision and the results were matched with those of 22 controls. Participants were tested using a clinical protocol involving visual exploration of black-and-white photographs of common objects, haptic exploration of real objects and visuo-haptic transfer of these two types of information. Results show a normal development in haptic unisensory processing in children with low vision and a significant difference in multisensory transfer between the two groups. In children with visual impairment, multisensory processes do not facilitate the recognition of common objects as in typical children, probably because early visual impairment may impact the cross-sensory calibration of vision and touch.
众所周知，早期视觉经验对于多感官处理能力的发展至关重要，因此，早期视力障碍可能会阻碍在探索和识别周围环境时不同感官信息的传递。最近，我们验证了在正常发育的儿童中，视觉-触觉物体识别转移很早就出现了，但在学龄期缓慢成熟。随后，我们验证了在由于脑损伤而导致早期运动和感觉异常的儿童中，存在一种单感和多感技能发展较慢的趋势。现在，我们研究了由于先天性视力障碍而被诊断为低视力的儿童的单模态视觉信息、单模态触觉信息和视觉-触觉信息传递。我们对 11 名低视力儿童进行了物体识别的单模态和双模态过程的研究，并将结果与 22 名对照组进行了匹配。参与者使用包括常见物体的黑白照片的视觉探索、真实物体的触觉探索以及这两种信息的视觉-触觉转移的临床方案进行测试。结果表明，在低视力儿童中，触觉单感处理正常发育，而两组之间的多感官转移存在显著差异。在视力受损的儿童中，多感官过程并不能像典型儿童那样促进对常见物体的识别，这可能是因为早期的视力障碍可能会影响视觉和触觉的交叉感官校准。
