Vinter Annie, Orlandi Oriana, Morgan Pascal
LEAD, CNRS UMR 5022, University Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France.
Front Psychol. 2020 Mar 9;11:345. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00345. eCollection 2020.
A high level of variability in the capacity of visually impaired children to accurately identify tactile images is reported in the literature, with on average rather low percentages of correct naming responses. However, most of these studies used raised-line drawings as stimuli to be explored and named. The present experiment investigated whether blind children of 3 to 8 years of age would demonstrate a satisfactory ability to name the elements making up tactile images when tested in an experimental setting similar to their natural reading conditions. Textured tactile images taken from genuine illustrated tactile books for young children were used, and the participants received information about the title of the book or listened the text that accompanied each picture before exploration, as it would occur in a natural reading setting. The results showed that their naming scores were indeed higher than previously reported at equivalent ages and did not differ from those of age-matched sighted children. These scores were positively impacted by haptic practice in blind children and correlated with the use of some specific exploratory procedures. The blind children benefited from information provided before exploration, as did their sighted counterparts. However, only in the former did the condition in which full information was provided influence the way the children organized their exploration. The haptic identification scores increased with age regardless of visual status, with the exploration times decreasing in the blind children, while the reverse trend was observed in the sighted children. These results are discussed at the light of the image-mediation model of haptics, suggesting that during the age period considered in the present experiment, blind children would progressively learn to process haptic information directly, thus leading to a decrease of exploration times, while sighted children would learn to translate haptic information into a visual image used to retrieve semantic information, involving an increase of their exploration times.
文献报道，视力受损儿童准确识别触觉图像的能力存在很大差异，平均正确命名反应的百分比相当低。然而，这些研究大多使用线条凸起的图画作为待探索和命名的刺激物。本实验调查了3至8岁的盲童在与自然阅读条件相似的实验环境中接受测试时，是否能表现出令人满意的能力来命名构成触觉图像的元素。实验使用了从真正的幼儿触觉绘本中选取的有纹理的触觉图像，并且参与者在探索之前会收到关于书籍标题的信息，或者聆听每幅图片所配的文字，就像在自然阅读环境中那样。结果表明，他们的命名得分确实高于之前报道的同年龄组，并且与年龄匹配的视力正常儿童的得分没有差异。这些得分受到盲童触觉练习的积极影响，并且与一些特定探索程序的使用相关。盲童从探索前提供的信息中受益，视力正常的儿童也是如此。然而，只有前者在提供完整信息的情况下，信息会影响儿童组织探索的方式。无论视觉状况如何，触觉识别得分都随着年龄增长而提高，盲童的探索时间减少，而视力正常儿童则呈现相反的趋势。本文根据触觉的图像中介模型对这些结果进行了讨论，表明在本实验所考虑的年龄阶段，盲童将逐渐学会直接处理触觉信息，从而导致探索时间减少，而视力正常的儿童将学会将触觉信息转化为用于检索语义信息的视觉图像，这会导致他们的探索时间增加。
