Postma, A. 1, 2 , Struiksma, M. E. 1, 3 & Noordzij, M. L. 4
1 Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
2 Department of Neurology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, The Netherlands
3 Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
4 Department of Cognitive Psychology and Ergonomics, University of Twente, The Netherlands
When communicating about the spatial positions of objects in the outside world it is critically important to use the same reference frame. Blind individuals are thought to depend to a great extent on spatial language processing. It is not clear yet which reference frames they prefer under which conditions. In this presentation we will show work on matching spatial descriptions to haptic object configurations. In a recent experiment a large group of sighted, blind and visually impaired participants (> 200) gave ratings on the acceptability of a number of verbal statements (e.g. the ball is above the shoe) in relation to object relations which were haptically explored. Interestingly, the blind more often choose an object centered reference frame (i.e. the shoe) than the sighted and visually impaired, who were as likely to pick a relative reference frame (own body). We argue that this reflects a stronger reliance in the blind on the functional relationship between haptically explored objects. Employing a more complex haptic object display in a separate study (Postma et al., 2007), we observed blind to more often give object centered descriptions of the display, whereas sighted more frequently used board oriented descriptions. We will discuss these findings in terms of how blindness affects reference frame processing in language and perception