Tactile Communication
Great Ideas for Tactile Communication for Infants and Toddlers and Teachers Too!
The skin serves as a receptor and transmitter of messages. Its acute sensitivity allows the development of such an elaborate system as Braille, but tactilism is more basic than such oddities implies and constitutes a fundamental form of communication.
In infancy, there is a recognition nd response first to signals, than to signs, finally to symbols. The infant arrives with a repertory of biological signals; he responds to these in patterns of reflexes such as coughing, yawning, sneezing and swallowing. Later, the infant learns that no only are these signs defined by others but their responses are defined as well. And thus he begins to use culturally patterned tactile symbols.
In time this early form of communication is augmented by speech; in part it may lay the foundation for learning speech. Tactile communication is never wholly superseded; it is merely elaborated upon by a symbolic process.
Tactual sensitivity is probably the most primitive sensory process. Contrary to that thought, the skin, as a communication organ, is highly complex and versatile with an immense range of functional operations and wide range of responses.
Tactile sensitivity appears early in fetal life as probably the first sensory process to become functional. In utero, during birth, and as a newborn, the infant requires the rhythmic tactile stimulation to maintain homeostasis - his internal equilibrium.
What might awaken or keep awake an older child, puts an infant to sleep; this age difference supports the assumption of an early infantile sensitivity or need for rhythmic tactual stimulation that fades out or is incorporated into other patterns.
The baby begins to communicate with himself by feeling his own body, exploring, its shape and textures, and thereby, establishing his body image. Later he focuses his vision upon his feel and fingers and so begins to build up visual images to reinforce tactile experiences.
The quality or intent of the message, as contrasted with its content, may be conveyed by the emotional coloring tone of voice, facial expression, gesture or lightness of touch. A child's reception of verbal messages is predicted in large measure upon his previous tactile experience.
The baby's initial spatial orientation occurs through tactile explorations: feeling with his hands and often with his lips, and testing out the quality, size, shape, texture and density of whatever he can reach. The manipulations involve motor activities and increasingly skillful neuromuscular coordination, established through tactile messages and gradually replaced visual cues. Bumps, pain, warmth are primary tactile signals; visual signs- size, shape, appearance, color, later become their surrogates. it is often forgotten how much previous learning was required to master these motor patterns. The adult rarely recalls how, in early life he relied upon touch for his initial orientation to the special dimensions of the world.
Thus the baby's perception of the world is built upon and shaped by tactile experiences. These become increasingly overlaid by other symbolic patterns, so much that they often become inaccessible.
The child begins by exploring everything within reach, but gradually he learns that there are prohibitions involving both people and things, and is thereby inducted into the social world with its elaborate codes of respect for property and persons.
Moreover, the child learns to distinguish first by tactile means the "me" and the "not me." Later he modifies these definitions, casting them largely in verbal form, but the tactile definitions nevertheless remain prior and basic.
Babies seem to differ widely in their need for tactile experiences and in their response to them. Deprivation of such experiences may compromise the infant's future learning, especially of speech and more mature tactile communication. If severely limited in these early experiences, presumably he must wait until his capacities for visual and auditory communication are developed sufficiently to permit him to enter into satisfactory communication with others.
Such a child may become unusually dependent upon the authority of his parents and over obedient to their pronouncements; he will lack the experience of prior communication and may find the sudden jump not only difficult but conducive to unhealthy relationships. It may also through light upon the impairment of abstract thinking observed in children separated from their mothers. There is evidence as well that not only reading disabilities, but also speech retardation and difficulties arise from early deprivation of and confusion in, tactile communication.
Highly abstract concepts seem to lie outside the range of most tactile messages and probably occur only in such a system as Braille.
