Spatial representation and processing in the congenitally blind
نویسندگان
چکیده
Although there is consistent evidence for a deficit in the manipulation and internal representation of space and spatially located objects by the congenitally blind (e.g. Heller, 1989), explanations for this deficit are disputed. In this chapter, two accounts are examined for their ability to explain the experimental data, and recent data from a comparison of blind and sighted participants’ judgements of, and memory for, relative object locations are described, in an attempt to discriminate between these two accounts. Blind People’s Visuo-Spatial Performance Blind and sighted comparisons have been made on a wide variety of visuo – spatial tasks (e.g., those involving mental rotation, mental scanning, pathway memory and word imagery), always with the same result: the blind group performs either less accurately or more slowly than the sighted control group. However, the surprising finding has been the similar patterns of performance that are demonstrated by both sighted participants and the congenitally blind on such tasks. These patterns of results have lead some researchers to suggest that the blind and sighted utilise similar mental representations. Given this assumption, the blind visuo-spatial performance deficit must be explained by less efficient processing of the representations. This is a processing account of the blind visuo-spatial deficit. Most perceptual data used by the blind are received and processed sequentially (e.g. haptic and audio information) whereas visual
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