Tactual Profile, Reliability and Validity of the Instrument

Contains fulltext : 55312.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Tactual Profile is an observation instrument for charting the tactual functioning of children (age 0–16) with a severe visual impairment. In the period 2002–2004, a study was executed to determine basic psychometric qualities of Tactual Profile: difficulty level, test–retest reliability, inter-rater reliability and construct validity. The results of the study showed that most items had an acceptable difficulty level. There was a strong correlation between two administrations of the instrument. The inter-rater reliability was moderate and the correlation between Tactual Profile and haptic intelligence tests was higher than the correlation between Tactual Profile and verbal intelligence tests. The study showed that Tactual Profile is a reliable and valid instrument

Tactual profile, an assessment procedure for tactual functioning in children and adolescents

Contains fulltext : 55313.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)Tactual Profile is an instrument that provides a procedure to assess tactual functioning in children who are blind or who have a severe visual impairment, from birth up to 15 years of age. The instrument concentrates on the tactual requirements that the everyday environment places on perception. Tactual Profile is based on practical experience checked against literature and developments in the scientific field of touch. The instrument has been outlined as a ‘structured observation’. Recently there has been a research on the reliability and validity of the instrument. The study has proved that Tactual Profile is a valid and reliable instrument that differentiates from intelligence tests

The Tactual Profile: Development of a procedure to assess the tactual functioning of children who are blind

Contains fulltext : 77264.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The Tactual Profile assesses tactual functioning of children with severe visual impairments between 0 and 16 years of age. The Tactual Profile consists of 430 items, measuring tactile skills required for performing everyday tasks at home and in school. Items are graded according to age level and divided into three domains: tactual sensory, tactual motor and tactual perceptual. The development of the instrument is described and the psychometric properties that were studied reported. Most items had an acceptable difficulty level, and test—retest reliability proved to be good. The analyses for the construct validity showed moderately high correlations between the Tactual Profile and intelligence tests. These correlations were higher for the haptic performance subtests than for the verbal tests. High correlations with other haptic tests were found. However, these associations disappeared after factoring out intelligence, possibly because current methods for examining tactual functioning are strongly affected by intelligence. A summary of work planned in further development of the procedure is provided

The effects of mothers' past infant-holding preferences on their adult children's face processing lateralisation

Contains fulltext : 99802.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Face processing development is negatively affected when infants have not been exposed to faces for some time because of congenital cataract blocking all vision (Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2001). It is not clear, however, whether more subtle differences in face exposure may also have an influence. The present study looked at the effect of the mother's preferred side of holding an infant, on her adult child's face processing lateralisation. Adults with a mother who had a left-arm preference for holding infants were compared with adults with a mother who had a right-arm holding preference. All participants were right-handed and had been exclusively bottle-fed during infancy. The participants were presented with two chimeric faces tests, one involving emotion and the other one gender. The left-arm held individuals showed a normal left-bias on the chimeric face tests, whereas the right-arm held individuals a significantly decreased left-bias. The results might suggest that reduced exposure to high quality emotional information on faces in infancy results in diminished right-hemisphere lateralisation for face processing.7 p