Exploratory procedures of tactile images in visually impaired and blindfolded sighted children: How they relate to their consequent performance in drawing

Vinter, Annie; Fernandes, Viviane Lemos Silva; Orlandi, Oriana; Morgan, Pascal

doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.05.001

Cited by 41 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…It could be argued that the exploratory procedures developed with age by blind children are less efficient than those developed by sighted children, with the result that the former collect only partial information for a longer period of time. However, in a recent study, it was found that children aged 7 years or 11 years with a visual handicap outperformed age‐matched sighted children in the haptic exploration of bidimensional tactile images (Vinter, Fernandes, Orlandi, & Morgan, ). The stronger dominance of local processing in blind children is therefore unlikely to be due to potential deficits in peripheral information‐gathering activities as compared to sighted children, although we cannot totally rule out this hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Local and Global Processing in Blind and Sighted Children in a Naming and Drawing Task

2013

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This study investigated the spatial analysis of tactile hierarchical patterns in 110 early-blind children aged 6-8 to 16-18 years, as compared to 90 blindfolded sighted children, in a naming and haptic drawing task. The results revealed that regardless of visual status, young children predominantly produced local responses in both tasks, whereas the production of integrated responses emerged later. Development of local and global processing seems to proceed similarly in the two populations, but local processing continued to occur at high levels over a larger age range in the blind. The possibility of visual mediation is pointed out, as totally blind children tended to process information locally more often than blind children with minimal light perception.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Local and Global Processing in Blind and Sighted Children in a Naming and Drawing Task

2013

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“…Besides the known applications of tactile sensory substitutions such as the Braille alphabet, white cane, or the TDU, our results open new avenues for mitigation of deficiencies of spatial functions in the blind and visually impaired. Indeed, it has been demonstrated numerous times that tactile information can support spatial functions in blind, visually impaired, and sighted subjects (Marmor and Zaback, 1976; Carpenter and Eisenberg, 1978; Grant et al, 2000; Ptito et al, 2005; Sathian, 2005; Chebat et al, 2007; Wan et al, 2010; Rovira et al, 2011; Vinter et al, 2012). However, the main innovation introduced by our study is the digital simulated nature of the tactile stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Rotation of Digitally-Rendered Haptic Objects

Tivadar

Rouillard²,

Chappaz³

et al. 2019

Front. Integr. Neurosci.

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Sensory substitution is an effective means to rehabilitate many visual functions after visual impairment or blindness. Tactile information, for example, is particularly useful for functions such as reading, mental rotation, shape recognition, or exploration of space. Extant haptic technologies typically rely on real physical objects or pneumatically driven renderings and thus provide a limited library of stimuli to users. New developments in digital haptic technologies now make it possible to actively simulate an unprecedented range of tactile sensations. We provide a proof-of-concept for a new type of technology (hereafter haptic tablet) that renders haptic feedback by modulating the friction of a flat screen through ultrasonic vibrations of varying shapes to create the sensation of texture when the screen is actively explored. We reasoned that participants should be able to create mental representations of letters presented in normal and mirror-reversed haptic form without the use of any visual information and to manipulate such representations in a mental rotation task. Healthy sighted, blindfolded volunteers were trained to discriminate between two letters (either L and P, or F and G; counterbalanced across participants) on a haptic tablet. They then tactually explored all four letters in normal or mirror-reversed form at different rotations (0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°) and indicated letter form (i.e., normal or mirror-reversed) by pressing one of two mouse buttons. We observed the typical effect of rotation angle on object discrimination performance (i.e., greater deviation from 0° resulted in worse performance) for trained letters, consistent with mental rotation of these haptically-rendered objects. We likewise observed generally slower and less accurate performance with mirror-reversed compared to prototypically oriented stimuli. Our findings extend existing research in multisensory object recognition by indicating that a new technology simulating active haptic feedback can support the generation and spatial manipulation of mental representations of objects. Thus, such haptic tablets can offer a new avenue to mitigate visual impairments and train skills dependent on mental object-based representations and their spatial manipulation.

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“…In fact, bimanual exploration allows one to relate hand locations to the body axis, and this provides an effective frame of reference for coding bilateral features of objects (see also Millar, 1978). Moreover, bimanual exploration has been found to benefit performance also in tasks requiring blindfolded sighted participants to recognize tactile images of familiar objects (Wijntjes, van Lienen, Verstijnen, & Kappers, 2008) and in shape discrimination or drawing tasks tested in both sighted and blind individuals (e.g., Russier, 1999, Vinter, Fernandes, Orlandi, & Morgan, 2012). Previous evidence has shown that the blind tend to employ both hands and use multiple strategies in haptic recognition more often than do their sighted peers (Rovira, Deschamps, & Baena-Gomez, 2011; see also Heller, 1989).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of vertical and horizontal symmetry on memory for tactile patterns in late blind individuals

Cattaneo

Vecchi

Fantino

et al. 2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Visual stimuli that exhibit vertical symmetry are easier to remember than stimuli symmetric along other axes, an advantage that extends to the haptic modality as well. Critically, the vertical symmetry memory advantage has not been found in early blind individuals, despite their overall superior memory, as compared with sighted individuals, and the presence of an overall advantage for identifying symmetric over asymmetric patterns. The absence of the vertical axis memory advantage in the early blind may depend on their total lack of visual experience or on the effect of prolonged visual deprivation. To disentangle this issue, in this study, we measured the ability of late blind individuals to remember tactile spatial patterns that were either vertically or horizontally symmetric or asymmetric. Late blind participants showed better memory performance for symmetric patterns. An additional advantage for the vertical axis of symmetry over the horizontal one was reported, but only for patterns presented in the frontal plane. In the horizontal plane, no difference was observed between vertical and horizontal symmetric patterns, due to the latter being recalled particularly well. These results are discussed in terms of the influence of the spatial reference frame adopted during exploration. Overall, our data suggest that prior visual experience is sufficient to drive the vertical symmetry memory advantage, at least when an external reference frame based on geocentric cues (i.e., gravity) is adopted.

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Exploratory procedures of tactile images in visually impaired and blindfolded sighted children: How they relate to their consequent performance in drawing

Cited by 41 publications

References 47 publications

Local and Global Processing in Blind and Sighted Children in a Naming and Drawing Task

Local and Global Processing in Blind and Sighted Children in a Naming and Drawing Task

Mental Rotation of Digitally-Rendered Haptic Objects

The effect of vertical and horizontal symmetry on memory for tactile patterns in late blind individuals

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