Spatial cognition of the blind and sighted : visual and amodal hypotheses

The purpose of this research was to analyze the role of vision in spatial cognition, and gain insight into the way the blind organize and represent space. We tested predictions of two hypotheses (visual and amodal) concerning the internal representation of cognitive maps and the processes of manipulating spatial information. Congenitally blind individuals were compared with blindfolded and sighted controls, matched for sex and IQ, on their ability to estimate path and straight-line distances between different locations of a small scale model