Landau B
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
Cognition. 1991 Feb;38(2):145-78. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(91)90050-e.
Four experiments investigated the young blind child's ability to discover, construct and transform representations of objects, in particular those that preserve the spatial relationships among object parts. Experiment 1 showed that three 18-36-month-old blind children systematically explored novel objects using distinctive haptic manipulations linked to novel shape versus texture. Experiments 2, 3 and 4 pursued a single blind child's ability to represent and transform the spatial configurations of objects. By 2 1/2 years, this child was able to rapidly recognize and identify familiar geometric figures following brief exploration (Experiment 2). By 3 years, she was able to recognize novel objects under 180 degree rotations when their configurations differed from distractors only in the spatial relationships holding among object parts (Experiment 3). At this age, she was also able to infer the locations corresponding to spatial parts of novel objects (the top, bottom, front, back and side) when the objects were upright or rotated, defined only by the location of a single "anchor" term that established their orientation (Experiment 4). In all cases, the blind child's performance was quite similar to that of sighted controls. The results indicate that visual experience is not necessary for the early natural emergence of the capacity to represent and transform spatial descriptions of objects.
四项实验研究了年幼盲童发现、构建和转换物体表征的能力，特别是那些保留物体各部分之间空间关系的表征。实验1表明，三名18至36个月大的盲童使用与新形状和质地相关的独特触觉操作，系统地探索了新物体。实验2、3和4探究了一名盲童表征和转换物体空间构型的能力。到2岁半时，这名儿童在短暂探索后能够快速识别和辨认熟悉的几何图形（实验2）。到3岁时，当新物体的构型仅在物体各部分之间的空间关系上与干扰物不同时，她能够在180度旋转下识别这些新物体（实验3）。在这个年龄，当物体直立或旋转时，她还能够根据仅由一个确定其方向的单一“锚定”术语的位置所定义的新物体空间部分（顶部、底部、正面、背面和侧面）来推断相应的位置（实验4）。在所有情况下，盲童的表现与有视力的对照组非常相似。结果表明，视觉体验对于物体空间描述表征和转换能力的早期自然出现并非必要。
