Conducted two experiments to investigate phonological and tactual coding in Braille reading by blind children. Results revealed a phonological effect in blind children's reading of single words. Also direct lexical access, from tactual input, proceeded with the same facility for the blind as does visual input for the sighted. (Author)

Performance of congenitally blind children and blindfolded children was compared on tasks requiring spatial reasoning and shape recognition. Blind subjects performed at least as well as blindfolded subjects on simple two-dimensional tactual processing tasks, but less well on more complex tasks requiring them to store, compare, and label objects.…