Picture processing by the blind.

Summary. It was first established that congenitally blind children could match raised-outline pictures and their corresponding verbal labels in Braille. A subsequent recognition task showed that previously presented pictures from the matching task could be reasonably well recognised, although having been paired with the corresponding word improved performance. Even if an item had been previously shown only in word mode this had a significant benefit on picture mode identification relative to some item which had not occurred previously in either form. Similarly, having previously encountered an item as a picture helped subsequent word mode recognition. This was taken as evidence of picture processing by the blind and that transfer of information from words to pictures or pictures to words was possible.