Structural Properties of Spatial Representations in Blind People: Scanning Images Constructed from Haptic Exploration or from Locomotion in a 3-D Audio Virtual Environment

Afonso, Amandine, Blum, Alan, Katz, Brian F. G., Tarroux, Philippe, Borst, Grégoire, Denis, Michel, Memory & Cognition

When people scan mental images, their response times increase linearly with increases in the distance to be scanned, which is generally taken as reflecting the fact that their internal representations incorporate the metric properties of the corresponding objects. In view of this finding, we investigated the structural properties of spatial mental images created from nonvisual sources in three groups (blindfolded sighted, late blind, and congenitally blind). In Experiment 1, blindfolded sighted and late blind participants created metrically accurate spatial representations of a small-scale spatial configuration under both verbal and haptic learning conditions. In Experiment 2, late and …

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Publication information: Article title: Structural Properties of Spatial Representations in Blind People: Scanning Images Constructed from Haptic Exploration or from Locomotion in a 3-D Audio Virtual Environment. Contributors: Afonso, Amandine - Author, Blum, Alan - Author, Katz, Brian F. G. - Author, Tarroux, Philippe - Author, Borst, Grégoire - Author, Denis, Michel - Author. Journal title: Memory & Cognition. Volume: 38. Issue: 5 Publication date: July 2010. Page number: 591+. © Psychonomic Society, Inc. Dec 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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