Despite their lack of vision, congenitally blind subjects are able to build and manipulate cognitive maps for spatial navigation. It is assumed that they thereby rely more heavily on echolocation, proprioceptive signals and environmental cues such as ambient temperature and audition to compensate for their lack of vision. Little is known, however,…

Historically, the bodily senses have often been regarded as impeccable sources of spatial information and as being the teacher of vision. Here, the authors report that the haptic perception of slope by means of the foot is greatly exaggerated. The exaggeration is present in verbal as well as proprioceptive judgments. It is shown that this…

The spatial frequency hypothesis contends that performance differences between the hemispheres on various visuospatial tasks are attributable to lateralized processing of the spatial frequency content of visual stimuli. Hellige has proposed that such lateralization could arise during infant development from the earlier maturation of the right…

The article describes a project in which blind and partially sighted children used a computer-guided floor turtle to develop spatial concepts such as right and left and accurate facing movements. (Author/DB)

Viewers who study photographs of scenes tend to remember having seen beyond the boundaries of the view ["boundary extension"; J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 15 (1989) 179]. Is this a fundamental aspect of scene representation? Forty undergraduates explored bounded regions of six common (3D) scenes, visually or haptically (while blindfolded)…

This article examines how the human visual system represents the shapes of 3-dimensional (3D) objects. One long-standing hypothesis is that object shapes are represented in terms of volumetric component parts and their spatial configuration. This hypothesis is examined in 3 experiments using a whole-part matching paradigm in which participants…

One reason students give for attending a community college is that the mathematics requirements appear to be less rigorous. Many of the author's students have told her that they have chosen to seek an associate's degree first because they do not feel confident that they could successfully complete the mathematics requirement at a four-year…

Summarizes the anatomical, physiological, and psychological evidence related to the primate visual system. States that comparison of perceptual abilities with the electrophysiological properties of neurons may help deduce functions of visual areas. (RT)