Noordzij Matthijs L, Zuidhoek Sander, Postma Albert
Psychological Laboratory, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Cognition. 2006 Jun;100(2):321-42. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2005.05.006. Epub 2005 Jul 25.
The purpose of the present study is twofold: the first objective is to evaluate the importance of visual experience for the ability to form a spatial representation (spatial mental model) of fairly elaborate spatial descriptions. Secondly, we examine whether blind people exhibit the same preferences (i.e. level of performance on spatial tasks) as sighted people in processing the type of perspective that is employed in a spatial description. Early blind, late blind and sighted participants listened to a route and a survey description of two environments. Next, they had to execute a recognition/priming task, a bird flight distance comparison task, and a scale model task. Spatial priming and symbolic distance effects were found for all participants. These findings suggest that early and late blind people can form spatial mental models on the basis of route and survey descriptions. Interestingly, in contrast with sighted people, blind people performed better after listening to a route than a survey description, even when the spatial problems that has to be solved explicitly favor the survey description. It seems that people with active vision build up a spatial mental model more efficiently from a survey description, while people with only visual memories (late blind), similar to people with no visual memories (early blind), build up a spatial mental model more efficiently from a route description.
第一个目标是评估视觉体验对于形成相当复杂的空间描述的空间表征（空间心理模型）能力的重要性。其次，我们研究盲人在处理空间描述中所采用的视角类型时，是否表现出与有视力的人相同的偏好（即空间任务的表现水平）。早期失明、晚期失明和有视力的参与者听取了对两个环境的路线描述和俯瞰描述。接下来，他们必须执行一项识别/启动任务、一项鸟类飞行距离比较任务和一项比例模型任务。所有参与者都发现了空间启动效应和符号距离效应。这些发现表明，早期和晚期失明的人可以根据路线描述和俯瞰描述形成空间心理模型。有趣的是，与有视力的人不同，盲人在听取路线描述后比听取俯瞰描述后的表现更好，即使明确需要解决的空间问题更有利于俯瞰描述。似乎有视觉的人能更有效地从俯瞰描述中建立空间心理模型，而只有视觉记忆的人（晚期失明），类似于没有视觉记忆的人（早期失明），能更有效地从路线描述中建立空间心理模型。
