General Enhancement of Spatial Hearing in Congenitally Blind People

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 1129-1139
Author(s):  
Ceren Battal ◽  
Valeria Occelli ◽  
Giorgia Bertonati ◽  
Federica Falagiarda ◽  
Olivier Collignon
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Spatial Hearing ◽  
Spatial Abilities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Spatial Skills ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Hearing Abilities ◽  
Striking Contrast

Vision is thought to support the development of spatial abilities in the other senses. If this is true, how does spatial hearing develop in people lacking visual experience? We comprehensively addressed this question by investigating auditory-localization abilities in 17 congenitally blind and 17 sighted individuals using a psychophysical minimum-audible-angle task that lacked sensorimotor confounds. Participants were asked to compare the relative position of two sound sources located in central and peripheral, horizontal and vertical, or frontal and rear spaces. We observed unequivocal enhancement of spatial-hearing abilities in congenitally blind people, irrespective of the field of space that was assessed. Our results conclusively demonstrate that visual experience is not a prerequisite for developing optimal spatial-hearing abilities and that, in striking contrast, the lack of vision leads to a general enhancement of auditory-spatial skills.

scholarly journals Ubiquitous enhancement of spatial hearing in congenitally blind people

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceren Battal ◽  
Valeria Occelli ◽  
Giorgia Bertonati ◽  
Federica Falagiarda ◽  
Olivier Collignon
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Spatial Hearing ◽  
Spatial Abilities ◽  
The Other ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Spatial Skills ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Hearing Abilities ◽  
Striking Contrast

Vision is thought to scaffold the development of spatial abilities in the other senses. How does spatial hearing therefore develop in people lacking visual experience? We comprehensively addressed this question by investigating auditory localization abilities in 17 congenitally blind and 17 sighted individuals using a psychophysical minimum audible angle task exempt of sensori-motor confounds. Participants were asked to compare the relative position of two sound sources located in central and peripheral, horizontal and vertical, frontal and rear spaces. We observed unequivocal enhancement of spatial hearing abilities in congenitally blind people, irrespective of the field of space that is assessed. Our results are conclusive in demonstrating that visual experience is not a mandatory prerequisite for developing optimal spatial hearing abilities and that, in striking contrast, the lack of vision leads to ubiquitous enhancement of auditory spatial skills.

Cognitive Mapping in Blind People: Acquisition of Spatial Relationships in a Large-Scale Environment

1983 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Herman ◽  
Steven P. Chatman ◽  
Steven F. Roth
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Scale Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Target Locations

Examines the spatial ability of sighted, blindfolded sighted, and congenitally blind subjects. They walked through an unfamiliar, large-scale space in which target locations could not be seen simultaneously and were then taken to each target location and asked the position of the other locations. Results indicate that past visual experience helps individuals to acquire spatial information from large-scale environments.

scholarly journals How visual experience and task context modulate the use of internal and external spatial coordinate for perception and action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginie Crollen ◽  
Tiffany Spruyt ◽  
Pierre Mahau ◽  
Roberto Bottini ◽  
Olivier Collignon
Keyword(s):  
Coordinate System ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Simon Task ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
The Body ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Coordinate Systems ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
External Frame

Recent studies proposed that the use of internal and external coordinate systems may be more flexible in congenitally blind when compared to sighted individuals. To investigate this hypothesis further, we asked congenitally blind and sighted people to perform, with the hands uncrossed and crossed over the body midline, a tactile TOJ and an auditory Simon task. Crucially, both tasks were carried out under task instructions either favoring the use of an internal (left vs. right hand) or an external (left vs. right hemispace) frame of reference. In the internal condition of the TOJ task, our results replicated previous findings (Röder et al., 2004) showing that hand crossing only impaired sighted participants’ performance, suggesting that blind people did not activate by default a (conflicting) external frame of reference. However, under external instructions, a decrease of performance was observed in both groups, suggesting that even blind people activated an external coordinate system in this condition. In the Simon task, and in contrast with a previous study (Roder et al., 2007), both groups responded more efficiently when the sound was presented from the same side of the response (‘‘Simon effect’’) independently of the hands position. This was true under the internal and external conditions, therefore suggesting that blind and sighted by default activated an external coordinate system in this task. All together, these data comprehensively demonstrate how visual experience shapes the default weight attributed to internal and external coordinate systems for action and perception depending on task demand.

scholarly journals The Haptic Müller-Lyer Illusion in Sighted and Blind People

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3340 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (10) ◽  
pp. 1263-1274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton A Heller ◽  
Deneen D Brackett ◽  
Kathy Wilson ◽  
Keiko Yoneyama ◽  
Amanda Boyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Low Vision ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Spatial Distortion ◽  
Lyer Illusion ◽  
Visual Status ◽  
Nonsignificant Difference ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Size Estimates

We examined the effect of visual experience on the haptic Müller-Lyer illusion. Subjects made size estimates of raised lines by using a sliding haptic ruler. Independent groups of blindfolded-sighted, late-blind, congenitally blind, and low-vision subjects judged the sizes of wings-in and wings-out stimuli, plain lines, and lines with short vertical ends. An illusion was found, since the wings-in stimuli were judged as shorter than the wings-out patterns and all of the other stimuli. Subjects generally underestimated the lengths of lines. In a second experiment we found a nonsignificant difference between length judgments of raised lines as opposed to smooth wooden dowels. The strength of the haptic illusion depends upon the angles of the wings, with a much stronger illusion for more acute angles. The effect of visual status was nonsignificant, suggesting that spatial distortion in the haptic Müller-Lyer illusion does not depend upon visual imagery or visual experience.

Spatial Hearing in Children with Visual Disabilities

Perception ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H Ashmead ◽  
Robert S Wall ◽  
Kiara A Ebinger ◽  
Susan B Eaton ◽  
Mary-M Snook-Hill ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Space Perception ◽  
Spatial Hearing ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Visual Disabilities ◽  
Auditory Space ◽  
Hearing Ability ◽  
History Of ◽  
Total Blindness ◽  
Self Motion

A study is reported of the effect of early visual experience on the development of auditory space perception. The spatial hearing of thirty-five children with visual disabilities (twenty-two with congenital total blindness) was compared with that of eighteen sighted children and seventeen sighted adults. The tests provided a comprehensive assessment of spatial-hearing ability, including psychophysical estimates of spatial resolution in the horizontal, vertical, and distance dimensions, as well as measures of reaching and walking to the locations of sound sources. The spatial hearing of the children with visual disabilities was comparable to or some-what better than that of the sighted children and adults. This pattern held even when the group with visual disabilities was restricted to those children with congenital total blindness; in fact, some of those children had exceptionally good spatial hearing. These findings imply that the developmental calibration of human spatial hearing is not dependent on a history of visual experience. It seems likely that this calibration arises from the experience of changes in sound-localization cues arising from self-motion, such as turning the head or walking. As a practical matter, orientation and mobility instructors may reasonably assume that individuals with visual disabilities can use their hearing effectively in day-to-day travel situations.

Encoding Direction in Manipulatory Space and the Role of Visual Experience

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.O. Barber ◽  
S.J. Lederman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Target Position ◽  
The Other ◽  
Finger Movement ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Imagination Condition ◽  
Subjective Reports

Congenitally blind, adventitiously blind, and blindfolded sighted adults made direction estimates of target position within manipulatory space after their index fingers were guided to each target from a neutral starting point. Observers remained seated in the same location throughout the experiment. In a “finger-movement” condition, observers’ fingers were guided to a target location from which they pointed to each of the other targets. In an “imagination” condition, the observers pretended they were at one of the target locations and pointed to the other targets as if they occupied the new target position. Regardless of visual experience, observers in the finger-movement task were more accurate, but only negligibly faster, than in the imagination task. The subjective reports of all groups suggested that cognitive-mapping heuristics were used in both tasks, contrasting with previous results obtained in ambulatory space (Rieser, Guth, & Hill, 1982). The results are considered in the light of a fundamental difference between manipulatory and ambulatory space.

scholarly journals How do blind people know that blue is cold? Distributional semantics encode color-adjective associations.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen van Paridon ◽  
Qiawen Liu ◽  
Gary Lupyan
Keyword(s):  
Projection Method ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Word Embeddings ◽  
Training Corpus ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Congenitally Blind

Certain colors are strongly associated with certain adjectives (e.g. red is hot, blue is cold). Some of these associations are grounded in visual experiences like seeing hot embers glow red. Surprisingly, many congenitally blind people show similar color associations, despite lacking all visual experience of color. Presumably, they learn these associations via language. Can we detect these associations in the statistics of language? And if so, what form do they take? We apply a projection method to word embeddings trained on corpora of spoken and written text to identify color-adjective associations as they are represented in language. We show that these projections are predictive of color-adjective ratings collected from blind and sighted people, and that the effect size depends on the training corpus. Finally, we examine how color-adjective associations might be represented in language by training word embeddings on corpora from which various sources of color-semantic information are removed.

scholarly journals The shared numerical representation for action and perception develops independently from vision

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
IRENE TOGOLI ◽  
Virginie Crollen ◽  
Roberto Arrighi ◽  
Olivier Collignon
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Motor Adaptation ◽  
Adaptation Effect ◽  
Visual Input ◽  
Finger Tapping ◽  
Numerical Representation ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Approximate Estimate ◽  
Action And Perception ◽  
Congenitally Blind

Humans share with other animals a number sense, a system allowing a rapid and approximate estimate of the number of items in a scene. Recently it has been shown that numerosity is shared between action and perception as the number of repetitions of self-produced actions affects the perceived numerosity of subsequent visual stimuli presented around the area where actions occurred. Here we investigate whether this interplay between action and perception for numerosity depends on visual input and visual experience. We measured the effects of adaptation to motor routines (finger tapping) on numerical estimates of auditory sequences in sighted and congenitally blind people. In both groups, our results show a consistent adaptation effect with relative under- or over-estimation of perceived auditory numerosity following rapid or slow tapping adaptation, respectively. Moreover, adaptation occurred around the tapping area irrespective of the hand posture (crossed or uncrossed hands), indicating that motor adaptation was coded using external (not hand centred) coordinates in both groups. Overall, these results support the existence of a generalized interaction between action and perception for numerosity that occurs in external space and manifests independently of visual input or even visual experience.

Moderne Ikonen

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-143
Author(s):  
Bernadette Collenberg-Plotnikov
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Modern Mass

›Ikonen‹ sind heute nicht mehr nur die Ikonen der christlichen Kirche, sondern vor allem die Ikonen der modernen Massenkultur. Beide Arten von Ikonen werden in der neueren Kunstreflexion aufgegriffen: Kunst gilt entweder, verstanden als Erbin der religiösen Ikone, als Phänomen, das Absolutes in singulärer Weise anschaulich er- fahrbar macht. Oder aber die Kunst gilt umgekehrt lediglich als Klasse in der Welt der säkularen Ikonen. Demgegenüber wird im Beitrag erstens die These vertretenwerden, daß die neuere Kunst sowohl Aspekte transzendenter als auch immanenter Ikonen umfaßt. Zugleich ist es aber, so die zweite These, für unser Kunstverständnis charakteristisch, ein theoretisches Kontrastverhältnis zwischen Kunst und Ikone an- zunehmen. Dieses gründet auf einer spezifischen Reflexivität der Kunst, durch die sie sich von der Ikone beiderlei Art kategorial unterscheidet. Today, the word ›icon‹ usually no longer refers to the icons of the Christian church, but to the icons of the modern mass-culture. Both sorts of icons play a key-role in the recent discussion about art: Either art is supposed to be a descendant of the religious icon, a phenomenon that gives us a singular visual experience of the Absolute. On the other hand, art is supposed to be just one class among others in the wide world of the secular icons. In contrast to these two positions this essay contends that modern art comprehends aspects of transcendent as well as of immanent icons. Furthermore, it argues that at the same time it is characteristic for our notion of art to suppose a contrast between art and icon. This contrast is based on a specific reflectivity of art, which marks a categorical difference between art and both sorts of icons.

scholarly journals The effect of congenital blindness on resting-state functional connectivity revisited

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria J. S. Guerreiro ◽  
Madita Linke ◽  
Sunitha Lingareddy ◽  
Ramesh Kekunnaya ◽  
Brigitte Röder
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
State Condition ◽  
Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽  
Congenital Blindness ◽  
Eyes Closed ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Eyes Open

AbstractLower resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between ‘visual’ and non-‘visual’ neural circuits has been reported as a hallmark of congenital blindness. In sighted individuals, RSFC between visual and non-visual brain regions has been shown to increase during rest with eyes closed relative to rest with eyes open. To determine the role of visual experience on the modulation of RSFC by resting state condition—as well as to evaluate the effect of resting state condition on group differences in RSFC—, we compared RSFC between visual and somatosensory/auditory regions in congenitally blind individuals (n = 9) and sighted participants (n = 9) during eyes open and eyes closed conditions. In the sighted group, we replicated the increase of RSFC between visual and non-visual areas during rest with eyes closed relative to rest with eyes open. This was not the case in the congenitally blind group, resulting in a lower RSFC between ‘visual’ and non-‘visual’ circuits relative to sighted controls only in the eyes closed condition. These results indicate that visual experience is necessary for the modulation of RSFC by resting state condition and highlight the importance of considering whether sighted controls should be tested with eyes open or closed in studies of functional brain reorganization as a consequence of blindness.

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