PDF(485 KB)
Space Concepts and Their Organization in the Case of Blind Children
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2011, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (3) : 744-749.
PDF(485 KB)
PDF(485 KB)
Space Concepts and Their Organization in the Case of Blind Children
There are two different views on the relationships between language and cognition: one is Linguistic Universalism, which declares that language is only the input or output of thinking, and that differences in language do not affect consistency of cognition; the other is Linguistic Relativism, which asserts that language affects cognition, and that people who speak different languages may have different styles of cognition. This kind of controversy also exists with respect to the relationships between spatial terms and spatial cognition. Some researchers believe that human could universally share spatial cognition, but others believe that different languages could produce different spatial cognitions and different spatial experiences. Owing to the blind people loss sight, they may possess different space concepts and concept structure of space words. How do blind people organize the space words? This study investigated the space concepts and their organization in the case of blind children. 63 blind children of Guangzhou Blind School took part in the experiment. They were asked to sort 17 pairs of Chinese spatial terms summarized by Yi-Fu Tuan into groups, according to the terms’ similarities. The groupings were subject to a Multi-Dimensional Scaling analysis and a Hierarchical Clustering analysis, in order to reveal the blind children’ spatial cognitive themes and spatial concept constructions. The results showed that there were two dimensions in the semantic spaces of the space words of the blind children:⑴state and direction;⑵geo-center and body-center. The blind children showed four space cognition themes:⑴three-dimensional direction around body;⑵ space distance;⑶three-dimensional boundaries;⑷space states. The concept structures of spatial words of the congenital blind children and the postnatal blind children were similar basically, but there were some differences among them, the concept structures of spatial words of the congenital blind children emerged the dimension of vertical/horizontal. This kind of result pattern also could be found between primary school blind children and middle school blind children, but owing to different reasons. The entire study showed that Lacking of visual perception determined the nature of space terms organization by blind children , but language , culture and education play important parts in blind people’s spatial cognitive themes and spatial concept structure also.
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