Exploring pictures tactually

Raised-line drawings of common objects can be identified by congenitally and early blind subjects1,2 and displays of this type are being devised for use in education (for example, ref. 3). Although a teacher may think it helpful to guide a blind student's hand around one of these drawings, several theories of perception predict that the guidance would be detrimental as passive perception is generally considered to be inferior to active perception (for review see ref. 4). We show here, however, that guidance is helpful and leads to better identification than unguided exploration. We also report that the information used to identify raised-line drawings is predominantly kinaesthetic.