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Abstract
We investigated the role of visual experience on the spatial representation and updating
of haptic scenes by comparing recognition performance across sighted, congenitally
and late blind participants. We first established that spatial updating occurs in
sighted individuals to haptic scenes of novel objects. All participants were required
to recognise a previously learned haptic scene of novel objects presented across the
same or different orientation as learning whilst they either remained in the same
position to moved to a new position relative to the scene. Scene rotation incurred
a cost in recognition performance in all groups. However, overall haptic scene recognition
performance was worse in the congenitally blind group. Moreover, unlike the late blind
or sighted groups, the congenitally blind group were unable to compensate for the
cost in scene rotation with observer motion. Our results suggest that vision plays
an important role in representing and updating spatial information encoded through
touch and have important implications for the role of vision in the development of
neuronal areas involved in spatial cognition.