The Development of Audio‐Tactile Spatial Integration: Unraveling Vision's Contribution

Tonelli, Alessia and Senna, Irene and Amadeo, Maria Bianca and Setti, Walter and Domenici, Nicola and Signorini, Sabrina and Cocchi, Elena and Giammari, Giuseppina and Strazzer, Sandra and Tinelli, Francesca and Camicione, Paola and Serafino, Massimiliano and Gori, Monica (2026) The Development of Audio‐Tactile Spatial Integration: Unraveling Vision's Contribution. Developmental Science, 29. ISSN 1363-755X

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Abstract

Vision is considered the dominant sense for spatial perception. Yet, how vision contributes to its refinement in other modalities remains unclear. Consequently, we investigated the development of audio‐tactile spatial integration using a localization task in which participants had to determine the position of auditory, tactile, and audio‐tactile stimuli and the influence of visual experience in this process. We tested sighted and blind children at different ages. We found that in sighted children, tactile spatial perception stabilizes earlier than the auditory one, and optimal audio‐tactile integration is achieved only after 12 years‐of‐age. Conversely, blind children showed higher uni‐sensory precisions from a younger age, although multisensory performance exhibited minimal improvement through age. Overall, our findings suggest that optimal audio‐tactile spatial integration develops late during childhood and that vision might play a pivotal role in this process, that is, the absence of vision prompts earlier development of other sensory modalities when processing bodily stimuli.

Summary

Sighted children achieve optimal audio‐tactile spatial integration only after 12 years, aligning bimodal precision with MLE predictions in adolescence.

Blind children show superior early uni‐modal sensory localization precision compared to sighted peers.

Tactile precision stabilizes earlier than auditory in sighted children, whereas blind children show the opposite developmental trajectory for localization.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2025 The Author(s). Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	RISE Symplectic
Depositing User:	RISE Symplectic
Date Deposited:	28 Nov 2025 11:35
Last Modified:	28 Nov 2025 11:35
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4796

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