title: Reference frame preferences in haptics differ for the blind and sighted in the horizontal but not in the vertical plane.
abstract: We investigated which reference frames are preferred when matching spatial language to the haptic domain. Sighted, low-vision, and blind participants were tested on a haptic-sentence-verification task where participants had to haptically explore different configurations of a ball and a shoe and judge the relation between them. Results from the spatial relation "above", in the vertical plane, showed that various reference frames are available after haptic inspection of a configuration. Moreover, the pattern of results was similar for all three groups and resembled patterns found for the sighted on visual sentence-verification tasks. In contrast, when judging the spatial relation "in front", in the horizontal plane, the blind showed a markedly different response pattern. The sighted and low-vision participants did not show a clear preference for either the absolute/relative or the intrinsic reference frame when these frames were dissociated. The blind, on the other hand, showed a clear preference for the intrinsic reference frame. In the absence of a dominant cue, such as gravity in the vertical plane, the blind might emphasise the functional relationship between the objects owing to enhanced experience with haptic exploration of objects.
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, (Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS), Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 8, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. m.struiksma@uu.nl
authors.forename: Marijn E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Struiksma
authors.forename: Matthijs L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Noordzij
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Postma
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001766:Blindness / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D003867:Depth Perception; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D013236:Stereognosis; D014110:Touch; D015354:Vision, Low / Q000523:psychology