Haptic Parallelity Matching in Children and Adults

In each group, half of the participants were male, the other half female. Blindfolded participants were instructed to make two bars, which were set in different orientations, haptically parallel to each other. They had to parallel the orientation of a reference bar which was felt with their non-dominant hand, at a test bar, that was rotated with their dominant hand.

The bars were presented in the mid-horizontal plane at a distance that was set at twice the length of the arm of the participant. The dependent variable was the difference between the orientation of the reference bar and the test bar. The results showed similar deviations for children and adults.

In both groups, a significant oblique and gender effect was found, although these effects were more pronounced in the adult group. These results suggest that children aged 9 to 11 years use the same reference frames as adults when paralleling two bars haptically.