Developing the blind child's cognition of the environment: the role of direct and map-given experience

Gcofonun. Vol. 23. No. 2. pp. 191-W. Printed in Great Britain

00167185I92 s5.00+0.00 Q 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd

1992

Devebping the Blind Child’s Cognition of the Environment: the Role of Direct and Map-given Experience

CHRISTOPHER SPENCER,* KIM MORSLEY,* SIMON UNGAR,* EMMA PIKE’ and MARK BLADES,* Sheffield, U.K.

Abstract: For the blind, ‘spatial entities which can never be seen fully’ are not just the large entities discussed elsewhere in this special issue, but include immediate geographical spaces. This paper briefly reviews the ways the blind child constructs space, challenges the long-held belief among mobility teachers that a well-developed body image provides the frame of reference for spatial cognition, and discusses techniques for encouraging movement in space as a basis for such cognitions. Indirect experience is also an important way of establishing and developing frames of reference: and this paper discusses the role of maps, models and computer simulations in orientation and mobility training. We argue that tactile maps, etc. should be seen as both a navigational and a conceptual aid for the blind. An interactive mapping system such as NOMAD, and intelligent real-world guidance systems such as REACT indicate the direction of future developments in giving the blind child a greater chance to move at will through their environment.

Introduction

structs the environment--smalland large-scaleand the role that cognitive aids, such as tactile maps, can play in shaping cognitive maps are therefore both of intrinsic interest and of importance to the broader issues of the development of environmental cognition [e.g. MATTHEWS (1985) and GOLLEDGE (1987)].

The theme of this special issue of Geoforum is ‘the cognition of spatial entities which can never be fully seen in their entirety-yet which have representations in our mind in forms usable for orientation,

navigation and place finding’. For the sighted individual, as the editor’s invitation indicates, this implies very large spatial entitiestowns, cities, regions-but for the blind and visually handicapped, by definition, this comes down to include also the smallest-scale places [e.g. HILL (1987)]. Nothing is fully seen, all has to be constructed, either through direct experience, or through aids such as maps, models and other graphics. The processes by which the young

* Department of Psychology, Sheffield SlO 2TN, U.K.

blind

University

child con-

of Sheffield,

In this paper, we aim to show something of current thinking about these constructive processes; and then, in the second part of this paper, move on to consider the role of maps and computers in the development of the blind child’s cognition of space and place. The Blind Child Constructs Space

For a full and detailed review of recent research on this topic, we refer the reader to SPENCER ef al. (1989). For the purpose of this special issue, we will offer a brief overview of the processes by which the 191

192 blind child gains and integrates information about the world to form a coherent and useful structure. Spatial knowledge is, above all, knowledge which facilitates mobility: knowing the location of resources, of places for safety, security and sociability; knowing the routes for efficient travel and, when necessary, for escape. Humans, as a species, normally gain most such information about the environment via vision and therefore the lack of this sense in the blind throws the individual back onto a much more laborious way of learning about space and integrating this information. In order to appreciate the point, one only has to reflect on how much integrated spatial information can be gained from a briefly-glimpsed overview of any novel area: think what it would take to build up the same spatial knowledge via touch instead of vision. Not surprisingly, as a consequence, the unaided and untutored blind child tends to be less mobile than the sighted, fearing bumping into obstacles, and becoming disorientated or lost. FOULKE (1982) has offered criteria for a definition of effective mobility: these include ‘the ability to travel safely, comfortably, gracefully and independently’, as well as the criteria of purposeful travel. For this it is thus essential to know where one is at present, where the goal-places are, and to deduce how to move to them from present position. In familiar areas, this travel may proceed along established and known routes: in unfamiliar areas, the traveller may use general expectations for the layout of types of place: what KAY (1974) has called the regular environmental grammar. Such general environmental concepts need to be developed with the young blind during the course of formal mobility training: on walks, the environmental grammar should be made explicit-the usual disposition of houses, lampstandards, parked cars etc. But basic to the whole of successful mobility is the child’s developing conceptualization of space.

Frames of Reference and Sources of Information: a long-held Belief Challenged

If the reader were to seek out the manuals on orientation and mobility training for blind children, one of

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the beliefs to be found therein would be that the blind child needs to have a well-developed body image from which the child learns to structure external space [see, for example, WELSH and BLASCH (1980)]. Body image in this context means a knowledge of the parts of the body, and how they relate spatially to each other and to the wider environment. In the sighted infant, eye-hand co-ordination enables the individual to verify the existence and identity of objects. As the infant begins to reach out in space for objects, he or she lays the foundation of a concept concerning the body and its relationships to the world. This is further built up as the child begins to travel through space and begins to see how their movement affects the spatial relationships. In this view, body image is the initial frame of reference, body-to-objects the next tier, and upon these is built the wider understanding of geographical-scale space. It has been widely believed that the blind child’s body image is delayed; and therefore teachers should spend the early years of mobility education trying to build up the body image. However, this presumption has not, until recently, been put to empirical test. When, recently, we did so (MORSLEY etal. 1991a), we found no such relationship between adequacy of body image and the child’s spatial and geographical skills. We tested the children’s body image, and their performance in travelling through both familiar and unfamiliar areas, and found that there was no relationship between body image and performance, thus, casting doubt on the mobility instructors’ long-held beliefs about the basis of spatial understanding. Indeed it would seem that, in order to aid the development of spatial cognition, instruction for the blind child should concentrate more on alternative methods for improving largescale space understanding, instead of concentrating, as now, on these close-to-body skills.

Encouraging Movement Spatial Understanding

in Space as a Basis for

We have already argued above that probably one of the most important factors in the individual’s build up of spatial knowledge is direct experience of that space. (The final sections of this paper will be concerned with indirect sources of experience, via maps and computers.) Direct experience is important for

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both building up a representation of the particular experienced area, as well as contributing to a general awareness of the ‘en~ronmental ~mmar’ mentioned above. Indeed, in a questionnaire study (SPENCER er al., 1989) we found that, controlling for level of visual impairment, the single most important predictor of a child’s spatial ability was the amount of experience the child had had in exploring space.

What then more natural to build on this ability to transmit to the blind child a compact, systemized summa~ of others’ en~ronmental experience? In other words, for children who otherwise would have to build up spatial structures laboriously via direct tactile exploration, one can provide specially designed tactile maps as an aid to cognition and thence to effective mobility through the actual space represented in the map.

We questioned parents about their attitudes to their child’s handicap, the things they had encouraged them to do, the activities they encouraged and so on. We found that it was the children whose parents had allowed them much free play outside the home, who made them help in the house, and who had encouraged them to be inde~ndent that became the most spatially competent.

Resistance to the use of maps with young children (sighted or blind) is, however, widespread. Adults in the general population, themselves often reluctant and inaccurate map users, tend to consider map reading a task too demanding for a young child [see CATLING (1979), for a survey of such attitudes]; and edu~tionalis~, under the influence of Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development, have for long supported this view. [For a review of this debate, see SPENCER et al. (1989).) Yet is is only recently that people have started to consider systematically what cognitive operations it takes to read a map. One such careful consideration by O’ITOSSON (1988) indicates that we should not expect young children to experience much difficulty in using conventional maps: research indicates that neither projection, symbolization nor scale pose crucial obstacles for the child. If one starts, preferably, with the knowledge that children already possess about their world, and then leads into mapping with the idea of a miniaturization of this world, a basic unde~tanding of simple maps is often naturally or s~ntaneously present in young children. The claim is not, however, that a young child can understand every aspect of every map, but rather that they can understand what a map is and how it can be useful.

What happens if the parents are overprotective and the child does not receive the encouragement to explore space? Such children often arrive at school with self-protective strategies: they move as little as possible, finding exploration stressful. They fear becoming lost, they fear above all bumping into objects and people; and, if this problem is not tackled, they are likely to spend much time in rocking on the spot learning little of their surroundings, while their contemporaries play around them, (actively further building up their spatial knowledge). We have elsewhere shown, in a series of case studies, how con& dence can be built up, the child ‘unfrozen’ and the exploration process begun (MORSLEY ef al., 1991b). Such children, we believe, can be helped to catch up with their more outgoing contemporaries.

E~~u~ing U riding of via Indirect Experience: the Role of Maps, Models and Computer Simulations BLAUT (1991) has argued that geographers should turn their attention from maps to the activity of mapping. His recent review of this ‘mapping behaviour’ through history and across cultures encourages the conclusion that mapping has been carried out by ‘all human beings of all ages in all cultures’, and that, as such, we should regard it as a ‘natural ability, related to the language acquisition ability’ (p. 55).

The sceptic might then revert to asking whether the young child could then go further, and use a map to navigate in the real world? FREUNDSCHUH (1990) has reviewed the experimental evidence on this point. He points out that opinions have been divided, following the two broad schools of though on the child’s cognitive development. The Constructivist school, folio~ng PIAGET and INHELDER’S (1956) account of The ChiM’s Concepf~n of Space describe a series of stages through which the child proceeds in sequence. The Incrementalists [to use MATTHEW’S (1984) term] suggest that the ability to understand spatial relationships is not developmental, but instead

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is innate and is driven by experience: ‘In other words, as the child’s experiential world expands, so does his comprehension of spatial relationships’ (p. 55). Predictably, writers and educationalists espousing the constructivist position [e.g. DOWNS and LIBEN (1991)] expect less of the child than the second, and, correspondingly, have tended not to find as early a competence in map-using skills as have Incrementalists such as BLAUT (1991). Freundschuh reviews the empirical evidence, and concludes that preliterate children are in fact able to extract the information from a simple map that enables them to navigate through local space. In some experiments, they have used the map to gain clues in a treasure hunt, in others to navigate through a maze or obstacle course. Yet the evidence, whilst apparently giving encouragement to the Incrementalist tendency also offers Constructivists some comfort, for there are definite and consistent improvements with age between 3 and 5. For further reviews of the use by the young, sighted children to navigate using maps, see SPENCER et al. (1989) and BLADES (1991). The case having been demonstrated here, our concern must now be for the use of maps by the child who is blind.

Tactile Maps as a Navigational tual Aid for the Blind

and as a Concep-

At one level, it is easy to see how specially prepared maps for the blind could act as effective navigational aids, by acting as a running set of instructions, almost a program for action. Recall that traditional mobility training built up the blind person’s knowledge of key routes by just such a set of instructions: ‘forty paces, left turn at the junction . . . ’ etc. A strip map [such as that described by GOLLEDGE (1991)] can act as a memory aid for such routes. But earlier in this paper we foreshadowed a more conceptual role for maps for the blind: their potential role in offering an overall structuring of a place or area, such that the individual can enter, explore and exploit a new area with almost as good a spatial frame of reference as the sighted individual might obtain from an overview of the area. This is not to descry the value as navigational aids of the kind of maps GOLLEDGE (1991) discusses: as he says, ‘for local

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movement . . . the technology now exists to allow speedy production of low cost, disposable, tactual strip maps’. These can be daily updated; and advances in Geographic Information Systems research offer increasing possibilities for users to call up and have created customized strip maps (or indeed auditory descriptions of routes) from the computer. Geographers and cartographers are increasingly committed to the provision of maps appropriate for the needs of the blind. Thus, for example, TATHAM (1990): It is implicit in the work of the International Cartographic Association’s Commission VII, Tactile and Low Vision Mapping, that visually handicapped people should be able to enjoy, independently, as wide a range of experience as the sighted. We would argue that this moral principle should apply as much for blind children as the blind adults

who tend to be the primary beneficiaries of work such as that reported by Tatham. But could blind children take advantage of such work as readily as sighted children? In a series of experiments, fully reported in MORSLEY (1989) and UNGAR et al. (1991)) we have been investigating this point, with blind and partially sighted children in the age range 5-11: the period during which many life skills in navigation are being established. We have taken the position that tactile maps can be an important aid for mobility, but that their effectiveness depends on their mode of instruction to the child being sensitive to an awareness of exactly how the child might use them. There have previously been no systematic studies on the patterns of use. The basic design of each study is as follows: we establish a baseline by offering each type of tactile map to the child without any form of training or prior experience; and then compare this with their performance after different levels of training or experience. We have a range of criteria which span both the navigational and the conceptual achievements mentioned above: i.e. both the child’s performance when walking through space with a map, and their changed knowledge of that space.

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Our methodological approach is one which maximizes ecological validity by carrying out all the investigations in large-scale, natural settings which the children are already motivated to know about and use. Thus, for example, in a recent study (UNGAR et al.,

1991) of visually impaired children’s ability to use a map to identify the position of features in a largescale environment, the crucial comparison was between what the children learnt about the area and its features simply from their free exploration of it, and what they learnt about it from studying a tactile map of the area and its features. We found the map contributed significantly to the child’s performance, with the most severely impaired children showing most gain from the map. In other words, when the totally blind children were given a map, their ability to learn the location of places in the real world it represented increased almost to the level of those children who still have some residual sight. (This latter group normally, not surprisingly, have an advantage over the totally blind.) The greatest improvement in performance came in a third experimenta! condition: when children learnt the area via both exploration and the map. In other words, integration of direct and indirect knowledge is superior to either separately. Other such experiments in our series have looked at the role of tactile maps in providing the blind child with useable knowledge of angles/bearings and distances within geographical space. Again, to choose an examplar, we will outline the findings of one such study, to evaluate children’s ability to estimate distances from a map. Visually impaired children are clearly at a disadvantage if they have no means of learning the distances between locations or features in the large-scale environment; and our experiment was designed to discover if young children could understand that a map provides information about relative distances between places. In the first part of the study, children were given a tactile map showing three landmarks in a line, The first and second landmarks had already been positioned along a path; and the child’s task was to

use the map to work out the correct position of a third landmark relative to the other two landmarks. The results from this part of the experiment provided the baseline for a further study, in which we gave children specific training in the use of map scales and distance ratios. Following this training, the children were re-tested, and we found that they showed a significant improvement in distance estimation. These experiments demonstrate that tactile maps, used sensitively with visually impaired children in real-life settings they are keen to explore, can significantly improve both the child’s specific knowledge of that particular environment, and increase their general ability to conceptualize areas, with obvious implications for the learning and subsequent use of future, novel environments. Other such investigations have looked at ways of introducing mapping concepts to the youngest of our children via, for example, three-dimensional models of very familiar environments such as the child’s bedroom; and then progressing from these to twodimensional representations of the same space (MORSLEY, 1989; SPENCER et al., 1989). Given, again, children who are enthusiastic to play the experimenter’s games (as the reader will realize, with young children, keeping up enthusiasm is important), it is easy to build on what we have earlier described, with Blaut, as an early readiness to map and represent geographical spaces.

Mapping Beyond the Simple Tactile Map There is now a burgeoning technical literature on the best techniques cartographers can use to represent space on tactile maps [see, for example, reviews in TATHAM and DODDS (1989)]. This discusses such issues as symbol design for ease of tactile recognition; methods for producing maps in quantity etc. One of the persistant problems faced by cartographers, moving from maps for the sighted to those for the blind, is that of clutter: the amount of information that can be included in a tactile map before it becomes unreadable is less than that in a visual map. Often, multiple overlays have been the preferred

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solution, but this may prove cumbersome and confusing in use. In practice, there has not been much empirical work on the ease with which the blind can use and recover the information they need from tactile maps. Given the coming of computer-based and smart-card technologies, might we envisage a future in which the ‘static’ tactile map is replaced by an ‘intelligent’, responsive form of giving spatial information to the blind? We will conclude this section with a brief mention of two such systems which go beyond the conventional tactile map; and which open up major possibilities for the spatial cognition and exploration by the blind. These are an interactive, multimode computer system, Nomad (PARKE& 1989)) and a smart card and speaking beacons system, REACT, currently being developed by Marconi (KIMBER, 1991; WHITNEY, 1991).

Nomad-an

Audio-Tactile

Graphics Processor

Tactile overload arises from the cartographer’s being forced to include all the possible required information onto the one map surface. Could it be possible to offer just that subset of information that the user needed for a particular enquiry of the map-database? Or to have the information re-processed so that some of it was available in auditory form? PARKES (1989) designed his computer-based system, Nomad, with just such possibilities in mind. It employs an auditory display in addition to the usual tactile display for relaying the information to the user. One can lay tactile graphics up to A3 in size onto Nomad, whose central feature is a rectangular touch-sensitive board. Auditory information may be placed at any point on this board, to correspond to any particular graphic on the display. The precise points for information are selected by touch and the desired sound or speech is indicated by an entry typed into the computer. Thus, the graphics explored tactually may be made explicit by increasing pressure at a specific point, thereby triggering off the corresponding phrase from the speech synthesizer. Nomad offers a wide variety of functions: one can use

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it to present and extract distances and compass directions; one can also lay down regions and routes the space represented on its map, a function which lends itself to creating board games (a useful feature when devising educational programs for young children). Even quite young children find the system, once shown, interesting and instructive. We have recently run evaluation trials, similar in conceptualization to the map-learning experiments reported above, comparing the spatial knowledge and skills of a group of young children with Nomad experience with that of a group without (PIKE, 1991). The trained children showed improved spatial knowledge of their own school (which we took as the familiar environment to be represented on Nomad) compared to the control group. The more spatially competent children grasped the Nomad possibilities easily; the congenitally blind child in our training group was slower to respond, but eventually benefitted most from the training. We concluded our evaluation with the observation that systems such as Nomad have great potential as a means of generating tactile maps for young children in a form which the young child feels they have control over and can interrogate, thereby building up their specific and general spatial representations. To extend the idea of auditorily given information about the environment further, one could finally turn to a number of projects under active commercial development. One such is the REACT concept, being developed by Marconi, a firm more usually associated with vehicle and aircraft guidance systems. In this concept, the blind traveller would carry a smart card, identifying him or herself as an individual wishing to interrogate now not the map representation of space, but the actual space itself. This card would trigger acoustic beacons located at strategic points-for example, landmarks, shop entrances, bus stops. These would then give the traveller a place identification, location and any new information about the place (e.g. bus services available, next vehicle due) via an auditory display. Marconi, together with the Royal National Institute for the Blind have, at the time of writing, just undertaken preliminary field trials of a prototype system in two contrasted settings: a London underground station, and a theme park (WHITNEY, 1991).

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We are writing at a time of considerable public interest in developing technological support for the mobility of the blind, among other handicapped groups. [The European Community, for example, has its TIDE program under way from 1991-1992: the acronym standing for ‘Technology for the Integration of Disabled and Elderly persons’.] In this paper we have reviewed literature and empirical evidence, ranging from the blind child’s use of their own body as a frame of reference for environmental cognition, through conventional tactile maps, to recent computer-based environmental information delivery systems. In each case, it is clear that the cognitive demands placed upon the navigators who are blind are greater than those imposed on their sighted colleagues; and that the blind can benefit considerably from cartographic support, both to navigate a specific route, and to increase their more general spatial awareness and enjoyment of ‘spatial entities which can never be fully seen’. are happy to acknowledge the financial support of the British Economic and Social Research Council, which has made possible the majority of studies by the authors reported above.

Acknowledgment-We

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197 Handbook of Environmental Psychology, D. Stokols and I. Altman (Eds). Wiley, New York. GOLLEDGE, R. G. (1991) Tactual strip-maps as navigational aids, J. vis. Impairment Blindness, 85,296-301. HILL, M. K. (1987) Without vision: the concerns of blind pedestrians, Man-Envir. Syst., 17,92-98. KAY, L. (1974) Toward Objective Mobility Evaluation. American Foundation for the Blind, New York. KIMBER, P. K. (1991) The Marconi REACT concept, GEC-Marconi Research. Colchester. MATTHEWS, M. (1984) Cognitive maps: a comparison of graphic and iconic techniques, Area, 16,33-40. MATTHEWS, M. (1985) Young children’s representation of the environment, J. envir. Psychol., 5,261-278. MORSLEY, K. (1989) Enhancing the orientation and mobility of the visually impaired child, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. MORSLEY, K., SPENCER, C. P. and BAYBU’IT, K. (1991a) Is there any relationship between a child’s body image and spatial skills?, Br. J. vis. Impairment, 9,4143. MORSLEY, K., SPENCER, C. P. and BAYBUTT, K. (1991b) Techniques for encouraging movement and exploration in the visually impaired child, Br. J. Vis. Impairment, 9,75-78. PARKES, D. (1989) The Nomad system, In: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Maps and Graphics for Visually Handicapped People, A. F. Tatham and A. G. Dodds (Eds). King’s College, London. PIAGET, J. and INHELDER, B. (1956) The Child’s Conception of Space. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. PIKE, E. L. (1991) An evaluation of Nomad, an audiographics processor, Br. J. vis. Impairment 9, 105-107. OTTOSSON, T. (1988) What does it take to read a map?, Cartographica, 25,28-35. SPENCER, C. P., BLADES, M. and MORSLEY, K. (1989) The Child in the Physical Environment. Wiley, Chichester. TATHAM, A. F. (1990) Opening the London Underground to visually handicapped tourists. Cartogr. J., 27, 142-145. TATHAM, A. F. and DODDS, A. G. (Eds) (1989) Proceedings of the Second Znternational Symposium on Maps and Graphics for Visually Handicapped People. King’s College, London. UNGAR, S., BLADES, M. and SPENCER, C. P. (1991) The use of maps by visually impaired children to estimate directions and distances, Developmental Psychology Conference Abstracts, Cambridge University. WELSH, R. L. and BLASCH, B. B. (Eds) (1980) Foundations of Orientation and Mobility. American Foundation for the Blind, New York. WHITNEY, G. (1991) The RNIB REACT system report, RNIB Technical Development Report. Royal National Institute for the Blind, London.