This study evaluated performance of blind (n=17) and sighted adults on a haptic numerosity task of braille symbols in which symbol size was varied. Although blind subjects performed better than seeing subjects, the rate of learning and patterns of errors were similar, except that blind subjects did better with standard than with enlarged symbols.…

Two experiments were conducted with 80 college students to examine factors associated with the crossmodal facilitation of learning Braille symbols when the visual modality is utilized. In Experiment 1 subjects using the haptic mode were informed of both the structure of the braille cell and the range of dot numerosity of the symbols to be…

The paper reports on a study of Braille learning in which subjects (N=96) were provided with information about the structure of the Braille alphabet and expressly instructed to use that information during learning. A previous experiment had found that merely providing subjects with information about Braille alphabet structure had no effect on…

Seventy-two sighted college students who studied the braille or Fishburne alphabet for eight minutes were tested for recall. More Fishburne than braille items were recalled, independent of item arrangement. Results suggest that visually impaired persons might use the Fishburne system for labelling personal objects or when braille learning is too…

The extent to which a developmental program of tactile perception and braille letter recognition would affect errors in these abilities and reduce scrubbing and backtracking behaviors of 30 legally blind braille users (5-15 years old) was studied. (Author/BD)

The study examined modality effects in the learning of Braille through providing a variety of either study or test trials in either the visual or haptic modalities. Subjects were 144 right handed college students. Results supported previous experiments demonstrating the visual modality superior to the combined visual-haptic or the haptic modality…

Two experiments, each involving 96 sighted undergraduates, investigated the effects on braille learning of presenting information about the number of dots a symbol contains at the beginning of the study interval (prompting condition). In study 1, prompting was compared with presenting no information during the study interval. In experiment 2,…

GROUPS OF 24 BLIND ADULTS (ALL SKILLED BRAILLE READERS) AND 24 SIGHTED COLLEGE STUDENTS WERE COMPARED ON A TACTUAL IDENTIFICATION OF FORM TASK IN WHICH RAISED DOTS WERE USED. THE TWO INFORMATION PARAMETERS, COMPLEXITY AND REDUNDANCY OF THE DOTS, WERE ASSESSED USING PUNCTIFORM METRIC FIGURES RESEMBLING HISTOGRAMS AND SIMILAR IN SIZE AND SPACING TO…

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)

Two studies examined the effects of handedness on braille learning. Experiment 1 featured 64 sighted undergraduates at North Carolina State University, all of whom were right-handed and had no experience with braille. Results revealed that females outperformed males, but that, contrary to expectation, no significant effects of handedness were…