It is well known how early visual experience is critical for the development of multisensory processing abilities, and for this reason an early vision impairment could hinder the transfer of different sensory information during the exploration and recognition of the surrounding environment. Recently, we verified that visuo-haptic transfer for object recognition emerges early in typically developing children but matures slowly during the school-age period. Subsequently we verified the presence of a slower trend of development in unisensory and multisensory skills in children with early abnormal motor and sensory experiences due to brain lesions. Now, we investigated unimodal visual information, unimodal haptic information and visuo-haptic information transfer in children with a diagnosis of low-vision, due to congenital visual impairment. Unimodal and bimodal processes for object recognition were explored in 11 children with low-vision and the results were matched with those of 22 controls. Participants were tested using a clinical protocol involving visual exploration of black-and-white photographs of common objects, haptic exploration of real objects and visuo-haptic transfer of these two types of information. Results show a normal development in haptic unisensory processing in children with low vision and a significant difference in multisensory transfer between the two groups. In children with visual impairment, multisensory processes do not facilitate the recognition of common objects as in typical children, probably because early visual impairment may impact the cross-sensory calibration of vision and touch.

众所周知，早期视觉体验对于多感官处理能力的发展至关重要，因此早期视力障碍可能会阻碍在探索和识别周围环境过程中不同感官信息的传递。最近，我们证实了用于物体识别的视觉触觉转移在典型发育的儿童早期出现，但在学龄期缓慢成熟。随后，我们验证了由于脑部病变而具有早期异常运动和感觉体验的儿童的单感觉和多感觉技能发展缓慢的趋势。现在，我们调查了因先天性视力障碍而诊断为低视力的儿童的单峰视觉信息、单峰触觉信息和视觉触觉信息传递。在 11 名低视力儿童中探索了用于物体识别的单峰和双峰过程，结果与 22 名对照者的结果相匹配。参与者使用临床协议进行测试，包括对常见物体的黑白照片进行视觉探索、对真实物体的触觉探索以及这两种类型信息的视觉触觉传输。结果表明，低视力儿童的触觉单感觉处理发育正常，并且两组之间的多感觉传递存在显着差异。在有视力障碍的儿童中，多感官过程不像典型儿童那样有助于识别常见物体，这可能是因为早期的视力障碍可能会影响视觉和触觉的交叉感官校准。