ABSTRACT
Mature human perceivers typically know from just handling an object what it will look like when brought into view. Conversely, they know from just looking at an object what it will feel like when eventually grasped. This ability is referred to as cross-modal transfer or cross-modal matching, and it has attracted the attention of psychologists from the earliest days of the discipline (cf. Berkeley, 1709/1948; Locke, 1690/1959) Current researchers have worked to establish the limits of performance for this ability, to compare it with within-mode discrimination and identification, and to demonstrate it on the part of infrahuman species (e.g., Davenport, Rogers, & Russell, 1973; Frampton, Milner, & Ettlinger, 1973; Friedes, 1974; Jones, 1981). Recently, developmental psychologists have documented that surprisingly young human infants are capable of cross-modal matching, at least under some circumstances (see, e.g., Bushnell, 1982; Meltzoff & Borton, 1979; Rose, Gottfried, & Bridger, 1981; also see the review by Rose & Ruff, 1987).
