Background: Spatial knowledge about an environment is an important determinant of ability to move effectively within it and of personal autonomy. Individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) have difficulty managing configural visuospatial information. Method: Twenty-nine individuals with DS and 29 typically developing (TD) children, matched for mental…

Introduction: Individuals with visual impairments may use long canes for estimating distances and detecting gaps, obstacles, and texture patterns. The study presented here investigated whether length perception with canes is influenced by cane material. Methods: Visually impaired, sightedblindfolded, and sighted individuals (n = 30 for each group)…

Virtual reality applications for blind people in smartphones were used to make virtual visits in advance to unknown spaces; these need to include a set of cognitive and sensitive interfaces that allow users to use their other sensory capabilities to understand information about their environment and facilitate the interaction with the application,…

Purpose: Visually impaired people are weak in terms of their learning words and concepts by hearing them and their experience of the world with their bodies. In addition to developing a standardized assessment tool in the Development of Orientation and Mobility Skill Assessment Tool (OMSAT/YOBDA) for Visually Impaired Students Project, supported…

The ability to learn routes though a virtual environment (VE) and to make a novel shortcut between two locations was assessed in 18 adults with intellectual disability and 18 adults without intellectual disability matched on chronological age. Participants explored two routes (A [double big arrow] B and A [double big arrow] C) until they reached a…

This study compared the drop-off detection performance with the two-point touch and constant contact cane techniques using a repeated-measures design with a convenience sample of 15 cane users with visual impairments. The constant contact technique was superior to the two-point touch technique in the drop-off detection rate and the 50% detection…

To test ways of predicting how efficiently visually impaired children learn travel skills, a criteria checklist of spatial skills was developed for close-body space, local space, and geographical/travel space. Comparison was made between predictors of efficient learning including subjective ratings of teachers, personal qualities and factors of…

A series of experiments were conducted to study variables affecting the alignment of blind pedestrians at street intersections. In the first two studies blindfolded sighted students, serving as adventitiously blind people undergoing mobility training, learned one of three strategies: no concrete strategy, tracking, and tracking and compensation.…

The sensitivity of 10 moderately mentally retarded and 10 nonretarded adults to changes in environmental spatial structure with and without visual-environmental clues was examined. Both groups showed similar sensitivity to perspective changes without visual cues, but only the nonretarded demonstrated increased accuracy with the visual cues.…

This article reports the measurement of the "veering tendency" of 4 blind pedestrians over 3 15-trial test sessions. Findings illustrate between-subject and within-subject differences in patterns of veering, and the implications of these differences for orientation and mobility instruction are discussed. (Author)

Four groups (sighted, blindfolded sighted, legally blind, and blind) of adults were trained to traverse a five-block route in a residential neighborhood and were then asked to reconstruct the route from memory. Results showed the blind and sighted adults demonstrated similar abilities to learn routes but showed significant differences in memorial…

This study evaluated the ability of 40 blind adults to spatially organize large outdoor places using a verbal response survey and a near space lapboard task. The study found a high correlation between performances on the large outdoor environment with and without sighted guide tasks. The lapboard task also predicted performance in the outdoor…

The article reports successful training with traditional visually handicapped orientation and mobility methods of a woman with no visual impairment but a neurological processing deficit leaving her unable to process spatial relationships. (Author/DB)

A study, including research and practice notes by various authors, investigated whether extended training in an acoustically rich environment could enhance the spatial updating ability of 12 adults with congenital blindness. After training, the adults' distance perception from a home-base location and novel locations was superior to a sighted…

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) causes restriction of the visual field, progressive vision loss, and night blindness. This article presents an overview of the most common problems in orientation and mobility (O&M) for individuals with RP, appropriate interventions, vision science discoveries related to RP, and the impact of RP on functional visual…