Sensation and Perception
How the perception of the blind or visually impaired differs from that of the sighted.
Article 1: Auditory Substitution of Vision: Pattern Recognition by the Blind The goal of the experiment in this study was to investigate whether or not there was an effect on the performance of recognizing visual patterns using auditory substitution by the early blind. The reason for the study is because of the development of the graphical user interface (GUI) in information technology, relating to computer systems. The GUI system is great for sighted people as it uses things such as icons, multiple windows, and a mouse based command structure; however this system isn’t so great for the visually impaired. The experimenters adapted a PSVA (Prosthesis Substituting Vision by Audition) to be used with a PC where a small screen area centered on the mouse pointer was translated into sounds to be interpreted by the user. The subjects in the study consisted of twelve male volunteers, six early blind and six sighted. The subjects were given a pure tone audiometry test to assess their auditory perception. In this experiment a graphics camera was adapted to the usual PSVA setup and an image was displayed within an area of 64x64 pixels at the center of a computer screen, the entire exploration area on the computer screen was 300x300 pixels. The artificial retina consisted of a square of 64x64 pixels that the pointer, based on the position of the pen location on the graphics pad, was centered on. During the use of the graphics tablet a part of the artificial retina would intercept a portion of the displayed pattern, the related pixels were then translated into sounds heard through headphones being worn by the participants. For training there was a program with 4 sets of 3 sessions in order to familiarize the subjects with the PSVA system. The subject’s performance was gauged on both accuracy and processing time needed to answer and the assessment procedure was the same as in
Article 1: Auditory Substitution of Vision: Pattern Recognition by the Blind The goal of the experiment in this study was to investigate whether or not there was an effect on the performance of recognizing visual patterns using auditory substitution by the early blind. The reason for the study is because of the development of the graphical user interface (GUI) in information technology, relating to computer systems. The GUI system is great for sighted people as it uses things such as icons, multiple windows, and a mouse based command structure; however this system isn’t so great for the visually impaired. The experimenters adapted a PSVA (Prosthesis Substituting Vision by Audition) to be used with a PC where a small screen area centered on the mouse pointer was translated into sounds to be interpreted by the user. The subjects in the study consisted of twelve male volunteers, six early blind and six sighted. The subjects were given a pure tone audiometry test to assess their auditory perception. In this experiment a graphics camera was adapted to the usual PSVA setup and an image was displayed within an area of 64x64 pixels at the center of a computer screen, the entire exploration area on the computer screen was 300x300 pixels. The artificial retina consisted of a square of 64x64 pixels that the pointer, based on the position of the pen location on the graphics pad, was centered on. During the use of the graphics tablet a part of the artificial retina would intercept a portion of the displayed pattern, the related pixels were then translated into sounds heard through headphones being worn by the participants. For training there was a program with 4 sets of 3 sessions in order to familiarize the subjects with the PSVA system. The subject’s performance was gauged on both accuracy and processing time needed to answer and the assessment procedure was the same as in