Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Can blind people think in perspective? (self.Blind)
submitted by Tidemand
When you look at something, it appears smaller the further away it is. And if a furniture is standing in front of a another furniture, you only see some of what is behind the first one. When you walk on the road, the road is stretching out in front of you if straight enough, and buildings and trees grow and shrink as you get closer and walk away from them. A long wall will look lowest at the end furthest away from you.
But with the exception of some rudimentary echolocation some blind people are capable of, they can only make a map of their environment in two way; direct touch and memory. A lamp, vase or chair will obviously always have the same size, so when they use to memory to imagine it and where it stands in the room where they are, I suppose it has the same size. If something is standing in its way, it doesn't really matter because they already have a clear idea of shape and location, and that's not going to change even if something is blocking the view for seeing persons or not.
When persons with vision close their eyes and think of their living room, kitchen or bedroom, they see it as they experience it through their eyes. But people who are 100% blind, and has never been able to see, I suppose they imagine these rooms without perspectives, where everything has their original size and has different locations at various distances. Three steps to the right is the chair, five steps right ahead is a couch, and so on. At least that's how I imagine blind persons experience the world. Or is there more to it?
But with the exception of some rudimentary echolocation some blind people are capable of, they can only make a map of their environment in two way; direct touch and memory. A lamp, vase or chair will obviously always have the same size, so when they use to memory to imagine it and where it stands in the room where they are, I suppose it has the same size. If something is standing in its way, it doesn't really matter because they already have a clear idea of shape and location, and that's not going to change even if something is blocking the view for seeing persons or not.
When persons with vision close their eyes and think of their living room, kitchen or bedroom, they see it as they experience it through their eyes. But people who are 100% blind, and has never been able to see, I suppose they imagine these rooms without perspectives, where everything has their original size and has different locations at various distances. Three steps to the right is the chair, five steps right ahead is a couch, and so on. At least that's how I imagine blind persons experience the world. Or is there more to it?
KillerLag 4 points 5y ago
Short answer, yes. There is a blind Turkish painter by the name of Eşref Armağan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C5%9Fref_Arma%C4%9Fan ) who has been blind his entire life who can draw perspective fairly well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTDQcSS809c
You mentioned that a vase or a chair will be the same size, but you are forgetting that how it is perceived at a distance changes the sensory input. For example, imagine a lit light bulb in a lamp in your room. You can tell the size of the light bulb from how bright it is. But if that same lamp was in your neighbour's house, it would be less bright because of the greater distance.
In a similar way with echolocation, the volume of the echo (and other factors) help to indicate the distance. The same object can give out different sensory information, which can be interpreted differently. Things like sound shadows also effect how objects sound.
Also keep in mind that these concepts can be consciously taught as well. Sighted children normally learn through incidental learning (they learn it because they see what everyone else does). When children first learn to draw, people look like potato men with sticks for arms, and the houses are the same size as everything else. But as they get older, they learn perspective from visual feedback of real life objects and other pictures. The same things can be taught intentionally as well, although I don't think most parents do that much nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTDQcSS809c
You mentioned that a vase or a chair will be the same size, but you are forgetting that how it is perceived at a distance changes the sensory input. For example, imagine a lit light bulb in a lamp in your room. You can tell the size of the light bulb from how bright it is. But if that same lamp was in your neighbour's house, it would be less bright because of the greater distance.
In a similar way with echolocation, the volume of the echo (and other factors) help to indicate the distance. The same object can give out different sensory information, which can be interpreted differently. Things like sound shadows also effect how objects sound.
Also keep in mind that these concepts can be consciously taught as well. Sighted children normally learn through incidental learning (they learn it because they see what everyone else does). When children first learn to draw, people look like potato men with sticks for arms, and the houses are the same size as everything else. But as they get older, they learn perspective from visual feedback of real life objects and other pictures. The same things can be taught intentionally as well, although I don't think most parents do that much nowadays.
fastfinge 3 points 5y ago
As a counterpoint: I can't. I find some raised drawings and paintings really confusing for exactly that reason. However, I also don't use echolocation much, instead focusing on my cane and other methods. I wouldn't be surprised if the ability to use echolocation effectively, and the ability to think in perspective, were strongly correlated.
EndlessReverberation 2 points 5y ago
I think you’re perhaps trying to hard to come up with ways that blind people’s experiences differ from your own. My wife was born blind and I lost my site at a later age; 98 percent of the time I don’t think you would find any major difference between how she and I conceptualize a room. Another thing to remember, the way you are describing a sighted person experiencing the world, with things being larger or smaller depending on their relative location, is not the “real” way the world works. Such an experience is an illusion that your eyes impress upon your brain. One thing that kind of lines up with what you’re asking, though, is my wife’s understanding of a picture that appears to have depth. She has an intellectual understanding of the concept, she knows the flat surface looks like it has depth to a sighted person, but exactly how that works might not be as experiential to her. For the most part, a blind person’s experience of the world is not as different from yours as you would think.
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