MOMILab, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, I-55100, Lucca, Italy.
Research Center "E. Piaggio", University of Pisa, Pisa, I-56100, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2017 Dec 15;7(1):17673. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-17896-9.
Our daily-life actions are typically driven by vision. When acting upon an object, we need to represent its visual features (e.g. shape, orientation, etc.) and to map them into our own peripersonal space. But what happens with people who have never had any visual experience? How can they map object features into their own peripersonal space? Do they do it differently from sighted agents? To tackle these questions, we carried out a series of behavioral experiments in sighted and congenitally blind subjects. We took advantage of a spatial alignment effect paradigm, which typically refers to a decrease of reaction times when subjects perform an action (e.g., a reach-to-grasp pantomime) congruent with that afforded by a presented object. To systematically examine peripersonal space mapping, we presented visual or auditory affording objects both within and outside subjects' reach. The results showed that sighted and congenitally blind subjects did not differ in mapping objects into their own peripersonal space. Strikingly, this mapping occurred also when objects were presented outside subjects' reach, but within the peripersonal space of another agent. This suggests that (the lack of) visual experience does not significantly affect the development of both one's own and others' peripersonal space representation.
我们的日常生活行为通常是由视觉驱动的。当我们对一个物体采取行动时,我们需要代表它的视觉特征(例如形状、方向等),并将其映射到我们自己的近体空间中。但是,那些从未有过任何视觉体验的人会怎样呢?他们如何将物体的特征映射到自己的近体空间中呢?他们与有视力的人做的方式是否不同?为了解决这些问题,我们在有视力和先天性盲人受试者中进行了一系列行为实验。我们利用了空间对准效应范式,通常是指当受试者进行与呈现物体一致的动作(例如,伸手抓的模仿动作)时,反应时间会减少。为了系统地检查近体空间映射,我们在受试者的可达范围内和可达范围外呈现视觉或听觉赋予的物体。结果表明,有视力和先天性盲人受试者在将物体映射到自己的近体空间方面没有差异。引人注目的是,这种映射甚至在物体呈现于受试者的可达范围之外,但在另一个主体的近体空间内时也会发生。这表明(缺乏)视觉体验并不会显著影响一个人自己和他人的近体空间表示的发展。