Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals
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Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals. / Gagnon, Léa; Kupers, Ron; Schneider, Fabien C; Ptito, Maurice.
I: NeuroReport, Bind 21, Nr. 15, 27.10.2010, s. 989-992.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Tactile maze solving in congenitally blind individuals
AU - Gagnon, Léa
AU - Kupers, Ron
AU - Schneider, Fabien C
AU - Ptito, Maurice
PY - 2010/10/27
Y1 - 2010/10/27
N2 - Vision is undoubtedly important for navigation although not essential as blind individuals outperform their blindfolded seeing counterparts in a variety of navigational tasks. It is believed that the blind's superior performance is because of their efficient use of proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes. Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience.
AB - Vision is undoubtedly important for navigation although not essential as blind individuals outperform their blindfolded seeing counterparts in a variety of navigational tasks. It is believed that the blind's superior performance is because of their efficient use of proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as temperature and echolocation. We hypothesize that by limiting these cues, blind individuals will lose their advantage compared with controls in spatial navigation tasks. We therefore evaluated the performance of blind and sighted individuals in small-scale, tactile multiple T mazes. Our results show that blindfolded sighted controls outperformed blind participants in the route-learning tasks. This suggests that, contrary to indoor large-scale spaces, navigational skills inside small-scale spaces benefit from visual experience.
U2 - 10.1097/WNR.0b013e32833eaaf9
DO - 10.1097/WNR.0b013e32833eaaf9
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 20736864
VL - 21
SP - 989
EP - 992
JO - NeuroReport
JF - NeuroReport
SN - 0959-4965
IS - 15
ER -
ID: 33906862