Weakness of Imagery Without Visual Experience: The Case of the Total Congenital Blind using Imaginal Mnemonics

Abstract

Since visual imagery is usually considered to be not only analogical but also founded on visual experience, blind people should perform poorly on visual imagery tasks. Instead, many experiments on blind performance in tasks thought to involve visual imagery processes have often shown that the blind do not behave differently from matched sighted subjects. In the present paper visual images are considered as representations maintaining some of the properties of visual objects and constructed from information from various sources. The limitations of these representations are explored in a series of experiments. Results show that, presumably because of the deprivation of visual experience, the blind have particular difficulty in constructing multiple interactive images.