In this essay, I argue that although philosophers of art have legitimately examined and emphasized the role of sight and hearing in respect to art appreciation, for the most part they have neglected the role of touch. I develop the idea that while sight and hearing form the melody line of art appreciation, touch is its bass line, one that is…

The experience of "virtual reality" can consist of head-tracked and stereoscopic virtual worlds, spatialized sound, haptic feedback, and to a lesser extent olfactory cues. Although virtual reality systems have been proposed for numerous applications, the field of education is one particular application that seems well-suited for virtual…

For individuals with visual impairments, poorly designed labels can be barriers to receiving safe and independent access to important information about products in daily use. The authors discuss how organization and proper lighting can reduce the amount of labeling needed on food products and indicate how individuals with visual impairments can…

Multisensory Structured Language Instruction has been used for decades by clinicians and practitioners as an intervention for teaching students with dyslexia. Multisensory Structured Language Instruction uses the integration of multiple senses (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic/tactile) simultaneously to teach literacy. Although the anecdotal…

The authors investigated the extent to which touch, vision, and audition mediate the processing of statistical regularities within sequential input. Few researchers have conducted rigorous comparisons across sensory modalities; in particular, the sense of touch has been virtually ignored. The current data reveal not only commonalities but also…

An independent engineering evaluation was conducted of the Optical to Tactile Converter (Optacon), a reading aid for the blind which senses the contrast of printed text and converts the information into a tactile presentation. Tasks performed included: user evaluation, optical, electrical, mechanical, production costs, life tests, reliability, and…

New technological developments allow even the most severely visually handicapped person to read print, sense images, and operate calculators and meters. One of these new developments is the Optacon, which converts printed images to vibrations sensed by finger touch, and may be used to read print, handwriting, and calculator displays. Another…

The results of an empirical investigation into how visually-impaired people sense their surroundings show that a range of environmental features can be identified using sound, touch and smell. The information gained is relevant to the design of tactile maps, to ensure that an area is represented in a way that is meaningful to the map users.…

As one research priority for mathematics education is "to research how mathematical meanings are structured by tools available," the present study examined mathematical representations more closely by investigating instructional modes of representation (Noss, Healy & Hoyles, 1997). The study compared two modes of instruction of place value with…

An independent engineering evaluation was conducted of the Optical to Tactile Converter (Optacon), a reading aid for the blind which senses the contrast of printed text and coverts the information into a tactile presentation. The manufacturer's reply to the evaluation gives a general impression of the report, responds to specific suggestions for…

Presents activities and demonstrations that enable teachers to use various types of confections as tactile experiences to spark chemistry students' interest and generate enthusiasm for learning. Presents uses of candy in teaching about atomic structure, spontaneous nuclear decay, chemical formulas, fractoluminescence, the effect of a molecular…

This study was conducted to investigate how students approach the learning of thermochemistry, what the challenges are and how instruction can make learning of thermochemistry more accessible. Specifically, this study seeks to understand: 1) which topics in thermochemistry are more difficult to learn and which topics are easier; 2) why the…

Children can learn a lot about social studies by "reconstructing a culture" in the classroom. To reconstruct a culture, students can make use of prior knowledge to build a hierarchy of concepts about culture as well as learn social science subject knowledge appropriate to their grade level. In addition, they can have the tactile…

The bibliography contains about 200 citations related to devices for deaf and severely hard-of-hearing persons and published predominantly since 1975. Selected citations focus on devices which utilize a sense other than hearing. Articles involving obsolete technology are not included unless they appear to have some historical interest. Citations…

As a child matures from infancy to early childhood, a shift occurs in his sensory hierarchy from tactile to auditory to visual. The transition between the predominance of the auditory sense and visual sense takes place in about grades four and five. Although the sensory systems do not function singularly (but are integrated in the total action…