Understanding and Representing Space: Theory and Evidence from Studies with Blind and Sighted Children (Oxford Science Publications) - Hardcover

Millar, Susanna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198521421 ISBN 13: 9780198521426

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1994

Synopsis

How we perceive and understand the space around us is one of the central topics of cognitive psychology. This book challenges the traditional notion that vision is the main sensory modality for this purpose, and compares vision with touch and movement as sources of spatial information in the absence of sight. Dr Millar's work with blind and sighted children has led her to formulate a coherent framework for findings from neuropsychology, neurology, and neuroscience. This framework assumes that specialized, complementary sensory inputs and outputs converge in inter-related networks, resulting in the organization of reference cues on which spatial coding depends. Addressing one of the central issues in cognitive psychology, this work will interest graduate students and researchers in cognitive and developmental psychology and visual perception, as well as educators involved with teaching and training blind people.

About this title

About the Author

Susanna Millar is at University of Oxford.

Review

`we have here a very considerable achievement ... particularly welcome ... Susanna Millar, for her work in the field, has deserved a celebratory festschrift; the only problem is that this volume will be a very difficult act to follow!'
Christopher Spencer, University of Sheffield, The British Journal of Visual Impairment, 1995

`The book is a 'must' for researchers probing into the complexities of how the young human child, when deprived of the sense of sight, comprehends and represents space. It will be obligatory reading, too, for those whose investigations have been based on the notion of the primacy of vision. It
is a masterly review of the relevant literature, capped by the expounding of a genuinely new and testable model.'
Michael Tobin, Research Centre for Education of the Visually Handicapped, Perception, 1998, volume 27

`'...The book has many attractive ingredients. It is concerned with important theoretical issues. It draws upon an extensive and varied literature...It really is quite rare to encounter work which maintains a clear focus on such significant representational issues while, at the same time,
attempting to apply the ideas directly, in this case to the techniques which might be used to compensate for the absence of sight...the wealth of data which the book provides is sufficient to make it valuable to its target audeince of psychologists, researchers in spatial representation, specialists
working with the blind and the merely curious.''
Rob Ellis, Dept. of Psychology, Univ. of Plymouth

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0198521421
• ISBN 13: 9780198521426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 324