Spatial Representation by Blind and Sighted Children

Abstract

The problem I want to consider is how the mode and level of experience affects children’s spatial thinking. To the non-psychologist spatial and visual experience are almost synonymous. Congenitally and early blind children lack such experience. Of course, other sense modalities also provide spatial information. We can, for instance, locate sounds, although this is not always very accurate; and hearing does not inform us about physical expanse, planes and surfaces. But this information can be derived from touch and movement as well as from vision. Some major theories of children’s spatial representation regard the source of information as largely irrelevant. For instance, Gibson (1969) assumes that spatial representation depends upon the progressive detection of invariant amodal features and relations in the external world. Piaget’s (1956, 1971) view is very different. He considers the process one of intellectual construction, derived from internalized sensori-motor activity. It is not perhaps entirely accidental that the bulk of Eleanor Gibson’s work is concerned with vision; while initial evidence for Piaget’s view depended more on observations on active touch.