Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002
Space and sight
Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.
This is a fascinating topic, but I wonder why it is that researchers (and
possibly the blind) seem to neglect the sense of hearing as giving a
"perception" of space and distance. As I was thinking about this thread for
the past couple of days, I noticed I seemed to be able to experience
"space" by picking up street noises outside my apartment, and I was
wondering why the blind may not be able to "get a sense of space" by
hearing the way things sound as they move by -- say cars or airplanes?
<HB: No, that sense of space derives from your visual experience of the
world. I vaguely recall von Senden mentioning that hearing doesn't change
the space-impairment of the congenitally blind.>
[Tom Miovas 06/06/2005: This thread continued a few years later, early 2004,
"Perception of the Congenitally Blind" and it was discovered through more
modern research that the visual cortext is used by the blind to process
information such that they *do* get a "sense of space" with hearing. Actually,
it turns out that the visual cortext functions like a huge multi-processor,
taking up tasks other than processing vision even for the sighted, if the
other perceptual processors get "overloaded" or when new functionality becomes
necessary.]
