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La finalidad de esta investigación es evaluar la capacidad de las personas ciegas para construir una representación interna del espacio, con propiedades topológicas y métricas, a partir de descripciones verbales. Otras dos cuestiones que se abordan son si la representación del espacio es similar cuando se construye a partir de descripciones verbales o por experiencia táctil-visual, y en que medida difieren las representaciones construidas por personas ciegas y videntes. Dos grupos de sujetos (ciegos y videntes) emparejados en cuanto a edad, sexo y nivel de instrucción participaron en dos experimentos. En las fases de aprendizaje de ambos experimentos los sujetos aprendieron la localización de un grupo de objetos a partir de una descripción verbal de su ubicación, o bien mediante la exploración visual / háptica de su distribución espacial. En la fase de prueba del segundo experimento se les pidió a los sujetos que respondiesen a preguntas sobre diversas relaciones espaciales entre objetos (arriba-abajo, izquierda-derecha, en ángulo recto). En la fase de prueba del segundo experimento se les pidió a los sujetos que indicasen cual de dos distancias era la mas corta.
Two experiments were carried out to assess the ability of blind people to embody topological and metrical properties in spatial representations generated from verbal descriptions. Another goal was to examine whether these topological and metrical properties were similar when the spatial representation was built from verbal descriptions or from haptic or visual perception. Two groups of subjects (congenitally blind and sighted) were matched for age, sex and level of instruction and performed two experiments. In the learning phases of both experiments subjects learned the location of a set of objects either from a verbal description or by exploring haptically or visually their spatial distribution. In the test phase of the first experiment subjects were asked to verify statements about up-down, left-right and up-down plus left-right relations between the objects. In the test phase of the second experiment subjects were asked to verify statments that compared distances between pairs of objects. Errors and reaction times were recorded in both experiments. Experiment 1 showed a higher percentage of error for blind than sighted subjects, but only when they were asked to verify the most complex relations. Experiment 2 indicated that there was no difference between blind and sighted when they generated the representation from a verbal description; however, the blind showed a higher percentage of error and slower reaction times than sighted after haptic-visual learning
