Spatial Knowledge via Auditory Information for Blind Individuals: Spatial Cognition Studies and the Use of Audio-VR.

Spatial cognition is a daily life ability, developed in order to be able to understand and interact with our environment. Even if all the senses are involved in mental representation of space elaboration, the lack of vision makes it more difficult, especially because of the importance of peripheral information in updating the relative positions of surrounding landmarks when one is moving. Spatial audio technology has long been used for studies of human perception, particularly in the area of auditory source localisation. The ability to reproduce individual sounds at desired positions, or complex spatial audio scenes, without the need to manipulate physical devices has provided researchers with many benefits. We present a review of several studies employing the power of spatial audio virtual reality for research in spatial cognition with blind individuals. These include studies investigating simple spatial configurations, architectural navigation, reaching to sounds, and sound design for improved acceptability. Prospects for future research, including those currently underway, are also discussed.

Children benefit from morphological relatedness independently of orthographic relatedness when they learn to spell new words.

We examined whether French children in Grades 3 and 5 (aged ∼ 8-11 years) benefit from morphological relatedness beyond orthographic relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings. Children silently read stories that included two target nonwords. One nonword was in an opaque condition in that nothing in the story could justify the spelling of its final sound. The other nonword was in either a morphological condition (for children in the morphological group) or an orthographic condition (for children in the orthographic group). In the morphological condition, the final spelling of the target nonword was justified by two morphologically related nonwords. For example, coirardage, obtained by adding the suffixage to coirard, designates the coirard's song and justifies the final silentdofcoirard. The orthographic condition included two nonwords that were orthographically but not morphologically related to the target. For example, the coirard's song wascoirardume, obtained by addingume,which is not a suffix, tocoirard. Then, 30 min after reading the stories, children were asked to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g.,coirard, coirars, coirar). In the morphological group, both third and fifth graders more often selected the correct spellings for items presented in the morphological condition than for items presented in the opaque condition. In the orthographic group, the results were very similar in the opaque and orthographic conditions.The findings show that the benefit of morphological relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings cannot be reduced to orthographic relatedness.

EXPRESS: On prior visual experience in mental map navigation using allocentric and egocentric perspectives in the visually impaired.

Using new developments in the mental comparison task paradigm, this study addresses the question of the influence of prior visual experience in the natural use of mental perspective to achieve mental spatial tasks without any protocol-imposed perspective. During the experiment, 39 participants (11 early blind, 13 late blind, and 15 blindfolded-sighted) explored two corridor maps to memorise the spatial arrangement of 10 objects disposed along corridors. After the learning phase, several tasks addressing spatial memory and reasoning used in the mental spatial representation were performed. Blindfolded-sighted participants preferred an egocentric perspective, while the two visually impaired groups showed no overriding preference between egocentric and allocentric perspectives. Results showed a performance advantage for egocentric over allocentric perspectives, regardless of visual experience. Our results shed light on previous assumptions regarding cognitive mental map construction, suggesting the need to reflect on previous results and their dependence on imposed mental perspectives.