title: Comparing methods for introducing blind and visually impaired people to unfamiliar urban environments
creator: Espinosa, Maria Angeles
creator: Ungar, Simon
creator: Ochaita, Esperanza
creator: Blades, Mark
creator: Spencer, Christopher
subject: Applied Cognitive Psychology
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Perceptual Cognitive Psychology
description: This paper reports two experiments which compared the effectiveness of different methods for introducing blind and visually impaired people to the spatial layout of urban environments. In Experiment 1, 30 blind and visually impaired adults learned a long and complex route through an area of central Madrid (Spain) either by direct experience or by a combination of direct experience and a tactile map or a combination of direct experience and a verbal description of the area. Performance on measures of practical spatial knowledge and of representational spatial knowledge was significantly better in participants in the tactile map condition. In Experiment 2, participants learned a similar route in an area of Sheffield (Britain) using either just a tactile map of by direct experience. No significant difference was found between the two conditions using the same measures as in Experiment 1.
publisher: Academic Press
date: 1998
type: Journal (Paginated)
type: PeerReviewed
format: text/html
identifier: http://cogprints.org/1509/1/wayfind.htm
identifier:   Espinosa, Maria Angeles and Ungar, Simon and Ochaita, Esperanza and Blades, Mark and Spencer, Christopher  (1998) Comparing methods for introducing blind and visually impaired people to unfamiliar urban environments.  [Journal (Paginated)]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/1509/