The Role of Visual Experience in Mental Imagery

Abstract

The mental imagery of participants who became blind early in life (EB participants), participants who became blind later in life (LB participants), and sighted participants was compared in two experiments. In the first experiment, the participants were asked to image common objects and to estimate how far away these objects appeared in their image. In the second experiment, the participants were asked to point to the left and right sides of three objects, imaged at three increasing distances. The LB participants’ performance of the tasks in both experiments was similar to that of the sighted participants, whereas the performance of the EB participants differed. The results reflect the close relationship between the development of visual perception and the properties of images.