[accessibleimage] Re: Molyneaux's question rephrased

Lisa,

I think that the example of understanding facial expressions is a good one
to encourage thinking about this issue more. It is a little more complex
than just simply basic sensory experience, and I think that facial
expressions are both culturally and context related.

First of all, in modern Western culture most children or adults who are
blind are not encouraged to touch faces, especially during the process of
conversations or other social interactions, etc. so I think that those who
never saw would have had very little experience of changing facial
expressions, even though I would venture that especially children, and some
adults, are familiar with the elements of faces from examining their own and
their closest relatives and friends by touch.

But, all of us who can hear, can in fact hear changes in tone of voice,
sighs, breathing, shifts of the body, etc. and other such things that
indicate emotions and changes in emotions.  When I am teaching English to
immigrants and refugees who are blind, I utilize gestures such as touching
my upper abdomen and groaning while encouraging the student to feel the
general location of my hand... or holding my forehead and groaning ... or
laughing very distinctly... everyone understands! I have also used this kind
of thing with fully sighted students, and many other instructors use this
kind of thing with fully sighted students... So this is another element that
helps sighted people interpret facial expressions, and can be used by blind
people to understand the concept of facial expressions.

And, sometimes people do reach out and touch each other in the course of
expressing their feelings, so this is another element that people who never
saw have access to.

Also, some people talk about being able to smell emotions and changes in
emotions, such as through perspiration, etc.

And the social context is very important. For example, when I groan my
students understand that I am not experiencing real pain. But, when someone
groans in a different context they may be concerned. And, when someone
laughs in a threatening context, their emotions are interpreted differently
than when they laugh in a friendly interaction.

I may have left something out. Others should feel free to add to the list...

So, there seem to be a lot of paths and a lot of different experiential
elements which contribute to understanding the same thing that facial
expressions denote.

Best,

Sylvie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lisa Yayla" <fnugg@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 3:49 AM
Subject: [accessibleimage] Re: Molyneaux's question rephrased


Hi  Will,

What do you mean by generic memory?

 >>These attributes that have been learnt through knowledge transfer can
often help in providing the spatial relationship attributes and other
attributes that may only be available visually. Therefore, blindness
doesn't necessarily exclude someone from learning these attributes by
indirect means.  I suspect that in some situations it is in fact
possible to identify something just through the attributes that have
been indirectly learnt.

Could this be the example of the faces and facial expressions that S.B
and Michael May had difficulty with. They probably wouldn't of had
tactile experience with this because I thought there is movement
involved, but they would know about faces, fracial expressions through
learning. And could a conclusion perhaps be that even thought one does
learn through "hearing about" something, a direct sensory experience
gives to a much stronger understanding?

Best,
Lisa


Will Pearson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I agree with Peter's view in respect to object identification.
> Theories of generic memory, such as Spreading Activation, put forward
> the idea that generic memory is made up of concepts, attributes of
> those concepts, and links between those concepts.  Objects are
> concepts and so identifying them becomes a case of matching the
> attributes of the object we want to identify with the attributes we
> know about a concept.  Attributes can be gathered from a range of
> sources, including the sensory modalities.
>
> So, the question becomes how much overlap is there between the
> attributes we can associate with a concept visually, tactually, and
> kinesthetically.  The greater the overlap then the greater the chance
> that objects whose identity were learnt tactually or kinesthetically
> can be identified.  To add to the attributes derived from direct
> sensory stimulation by an object people also learn attributes through
> knowledge transfer, e.g. the sun is in the sky and the sky is above
> you.  These attributes that have been learnt through knowledge
> transfer can often help in providing the spatial relationship
> attributes and other attributes that may only be available visually.
> Therefore, blindness doesn't necessarily exclude someone from learning
> these attributes by indirect means.  I suspect that in some situations
> it is in fact possible to identify something just through the
> attributes that have been indirectly learnt.
>
> To illustrate attribute matching and how attributes acquired tactually
> or kinesthetically can be applied visually I'm going to borrow Peter's
> example of a square.  Thinking about the attributes of a square then
> there are certain attributes that, in combination, make a square
> unique.  These attributes are the fact it has four corners, that each
> corner is a right angle joint, and that all sides are of equal
> length.  These attributes can be learnt tactually and kinesthetically
> through a variety of means.  A corner, which is a concept in itself,
> can be identified through the attribute of a change in the direction
> of an edge of something.  This can be determined kinesthetically by
> running someone's finger, or maybe a probe of some sorts, around the
> edge of a square and checking for the existance of corners.  Visually
> the detection of corners is likely a spatial comparison, given the
> parallelism of vision, between two edges of the shape.  Counting the
> number of corners then becomes the practice of following the edge of a
> shape around its perimeter and counting how many times there is a
> change in direction of the edge, something that can be accomplished
> both kinesthetically and visually.  Judging the equality of length for
> the sides is probably a simple spatial relationship visually whilst it
> can be accomplished tactually by feeling two sides at the same time,
> determining whether those two sides are equal, and repeating the
> process for the other two sides.
>
> I've seen attribute matching being used in haptics related
> experiments.  The subjects are typically sighted undergrads, well,
> most research is done at universities *smile*, and so their primary
> means of object identification is visual.  However, when they are
> presented with shapes, even shapes that they haven't touched before,
> they can identify simple shapes with fairly good accuracy.
> Identification of more complex shapes tends to have lower accuracy.
> This lower accuracy is unlikely due to differences in the primary
> modality used for object identification but due to the serial nature
> of haptic devices and, to a lesser extent, touch in general.  Complex
> objects require more attributes on which to make an identification.
> When exploring something serially each time an attribute is
> encountered it has to be remembered and this leads to a situation in
> which people fail to remember all of the attributes comprising a
> complex object and it is this memory problem that is likely the cause
> for low accuracy in identifying complex objects.  Indeed, when
> experimental participants are asked to draw what they remember from
> exploring an object kinesthetically they often recall a number of
> attributes correctly but fail to recall other attributes, even though
> they explored them and likely identified them.  This lack of
> attributes in memory results in an inability to successfully match the
> known attributes of a physical object with those that are known about
> the object from generic memory or it can result in a situation where
> the known attributes result in multiple matches and disambiguation
> isn't possible.
>
> Will
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Meijer" <blindfold@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 4:41 PM
> Subject: [accessibleimage] Re: Molyneaux's question rephrased
>
>
>> Hi Lisa,
>>
>> At the URL
>>
>>    http://www.seeingwithsound.com/extra/molyneux.ppt
>>
>> I have a Powerpoint file illustrating how The vOICe lets
>> you *hear* the difference between a cube (square) and a
>> sphere (filled circle), even if you have never seen.
>>
>> I had rephrased Molyneaux's question as "Would someone
>> born blind, using 'seeing-with-sound', be able to tell
>> a cube from a sphere by 'sight' alone? The answer being
>> yes.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Peter Meijer
>>
>>
>> Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
>> http://www.seeingwithsound.com
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>

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