Tactile, motor and cognitive capacities decline with age, but little is known about how this relates to braille reading outcomes. This study investigated correlates of braille reading speed among working-age and older adults. Texts were read in two modes (oral/silent) and two media (paper/electronic braille display) by 46 blind adults (age range…

This study investigated the spatial analysis of tactile hierarchical patterns in 110 early-blind children aged 6-8 to 16-18 years, as compared to 90 blindfolded sighted children, in a naming and haptic drawing task. The results revealed that regardless of visual status, young children predominantly produced local responses in both tasks, whereas…

Change blindness refers to the difficulty most people find in detecting a difference between two pictures when these are presented successively, with a brief interruption between. Attention at the site of the change is required for detection. A number of studies have investigated change blindness in adults and children with autism spectrum…

Previous studies have shown that in comparison with the sighted, blind individuals display superior non-visual perceptual abilities and differ in brain organisation. In this study, we investigated the performance of blind and sighted participants on a vibrotactile discrimination task. Thirty-three blind participants were classified into one of…

Temporal order judgements (TOJ) for two tactile stimuli, one presented to the left and one to the right hand, are less precise when the hands are crossed over the midline than when the hands are uncrossed. This "crossed hand" effect has been considered as evidence for a remapping of tactile input into an external reference frame. Since late, but…

This article reports on a survey of 32 parents' recollections of when their children first demonstrated an awareness that they were visually impaired. It concludes that children with visual impairments achieve a basic level of understanding that their vision is different from that of others at ages varying from two to nine. (Author/DB)

A study involving 29 sighted and 22 blind children in grades 3-12 was conducted to determine whether there are grade, sex, and handedness group differences in texture preferences and whether such preferences effect discrimination accuracy. (SBH)

Two studies using the concepts and research techniques of J. Piaget were conducted to compare cognitive processes in 45 blind children (2-to-12-years-old) and a random sample of sighted children. (SB)

Twenty children, aged 7-12, with severe visual impairments completed a series of visual tasks requiring interpretation, analysis, manipulation, and visual motor coordination. Findings are discussed in terms of total performance, individual task performance, performance of younger versus older children, and performance of good versus poor readers.…

Forty blind children (ages 6 to 14, IQ's 65 to 132) in residential schools were studied to discover the relationship of verbalism to age, intelligence, experience, and personal adjustment. The children were given 40 selected words to obtain definitions, experience claims, and visually oriented verbalism scores. They then tried to identify items…

Medical journals are not often accessible to students and practitioners of education, and therefore the wealth of material in these journals regarding the health of school children is mainly lost to the educational world. The present bulletin is the result of a desire to put this material at the disposal of superintendents, principals, professors,…