Abstract
Mental rotation in the congenitally blind was investigated with a haptic letter-judgment task. Blind subjects and blindfolded, sighted subjects were presented a letter in some orientation between 0° to 300° from upright and timed while they judged whether it was a normal or mirror-image letter. Both groups showed an increasing response time with the stimulus’s departure from upright; this result was interpreted as reflecting the process of mental rotation. The results for the blind subjects suggest that mental rotation can operate on a spatial representation that does not have any specifically visual components. Further research showed that for the sighted subjects in the haptic task, the orientation of a letter is coded with respect to the position of the hand. Sighted subjects may code the orientation of the letter and then translate this code into a visual representation, or they may use a spatial representation that is not specifically visual.
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This research was supported in part by Research Grant NIE-77-0007 from the National Institute of Education and Grant MH-29617 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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Carpenter, P.A., Eisenberg, P. Mental rotation and the frame of reference in blind and sighted individuals. Perception & Psychophysics 23, 117–124 (1978). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208291
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208291