The Development of Touch Perception and Body Representation
September 26th, 2020
United Kingdom
Andrew J. Bremner
This chapter explains how infants gradually develop tactile perception and body awareness through experience, integrating touch with vision and movement to build a coherent sense of their own body and self.
Cambridge University Press
DOI: 10.1017/978110835159.009
Posted byRiley Fitzpatrick
Pending staff verification
Notify
Abstract/Description
Touch occupies a greater extent of our bodies than all other senses put together (see Gallace & Spence, 2014, for a rich characterization of touch). The skin, our organ of cutaneous touch, is thought to account for 16–18% of body mass (Montagu, 1978). As such, touch can certainly be considered the bodily sense, being distributed not just in our haptic organs (typically our hands; see Radman, 2013), but throughout and covering our bodies. Partly as a result of this, touch is pervasive in sensory experience. It is also our first sense: At 7 weeks of gestation, a human fetus will move if its lips are touched (Hooker, 1952).
