Recall of haptic information by blind and sighted individuals

Previous studies indicate that recall of information gained by hand appears to be less disturbed by an intervening classification task than recall of information gained by eye, suggesting that the organization of memory may vary with the physical nature of the stimulus. The present study with 32 congenitally blind and 32 sighted, blindfolded high school students tested whether the apparent modality difference stems from differential experience. Ss were asked to reproduce the distance covered in the initial movement of a lever. Blind Ss consistently showed poorer recall after a classification task. Sighted male Ss consistently showed no effect, and sighted female Ss showed an effect on the longest and shortest of the 4 distances. Results suggest that the nature of both experience and coding underlie the apparent modality difference. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).