Cognitive mapping without visual experience

Abstract

Try this simple experiment: close your eyes tightly, stand up, and walk to the other side of the room and back. You have just simulated for yourself what it is like to be blind. Well, not quite: there are several important factors missing. Firstly, you knew all along that you could open your eyes at any minute if you ran into trouble (e.g., a large hard obstacle). A blind person does not have that option for recovering from a mistake. Secondly, you almost certainly used your visually derived mental 'map' of the room's layout to guide you. Think how much harder it would have been to do the same thing in an unfamiliar room. Thirdly, you drew on a set of spatial concepts and orientation skills developed across your life-span that involved vision as a major unifying sense; the very first time you, as an infant, watched your hand as you reached out for an object, you were already learning about space through vision.