Dr Karin Petrini, from the University of Bath, will talk to the audience of Science in Radstock on Tuesday, 21st November about ‘The world through children’s senses: Why kids experience the world differently, and why this matters.’

Karin is a Lecturer in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; she leads the Virtual Reality lab and is a member of the Cross-Modal Cognition Lab and the Centre for Applied Autism Research team (CAAR).

Karin said: “In everyday life, we are seldom aware of the huge amount of information that reaches our senses. For example, when we talk to someone we receive information through vision about the person’s facial expression, body gestures and mouth movement, while also receiving information through sound in the form of words and emotional state.

“Our brain has the difficult task to make sense of all this incoming information and does this through a very useful mechanism that combines all the information from the senses in an optimal way. This way we are able to understand, with high certainty, what the person talking to us is saying and feeling. In other situations this mechanism allows us to avoid dangerous situations e.g., by using both the sight and sound of a car approaching to best estimate its position.

“While in adults this mechanism is well-developed, in children it is not present until quite late. That is, not until eight years of age. Indeed, studies from Bath University and other laboratories have now shown that children mostly rely on their sense of vision at this early age.

“These differences between children and adults have important implications not only in everyday situations in which young children could be more prone to errors but also for the development of efficient and adequate aids for the visually impaired.”

The group at Bath University studies the development of these sensory abilities in sighted and visually impaired children and adults by using behavioural as well as physiological methods. The results from this work will help develop efficient and age appropriate technologies that translate the lost information (e.g. from vision loss) into another form of sensory information (e.g. sound).

All will be made welcome at the Radstock Working Men’s Club at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 21st November.

For more information, please visit: radstockmuseum.co.uk/our-talks-programme