Infants' tactual discrimination of novel and familiar tactual stimuli.

40 10-month-old infants were given 2 min to explore tactually an object in a totally darkened room. Subsequently, during a 2-min test trial in the dark, half of the infants were given the same object and half were given a novel shape. Infants presented with the novel shape evidenced significantly longer durations of manipulation than infants presented with familiar forms. Infants are thus capable of tactually discriminating novel and familiar shapes in the absence of vision and demonstrate a preference for novelty within the tactual modality.