Tactile Discrimination

Poor tactile discrimination limits the ability of a person with special needs to know what the hands or body are doing. Touch perception is your ability to feel your way around a space and know what you are touching. The ability to identify, texture, and shape are fundamental learning blocks. Handwriting speed and legibility have been found to be affected by touch perception. The brain needs to accurately perceive the tactile and proprioceptive information coming from the fingers and use that information to control the pencil and form letters accurately. Children with poor touch perception may be clumsy while holding small or fragile items. They may also hold a pencil really tightly to help them “feel” the pencil better.