Marie Skłodowska Curie (MSCA) Individual Fellowships 2016 Recruitment Information
Principal Investigator: Dr Karin Petrini
Department: Department of Psychology
Link to research webpage:
Short description of research area to investigate with a potential MC Fellow
(Please keep within this page):
Testing the efficiency of sensory substitution devices during spatial navigation in blind children and adults
As human adults, the perception of our world can be greatly improved by using different cues such as sight and sound (Ernst & Banks, 2002; Landy, Maloney, Johnston, & Young, 1995). For example, when finding our way to a supermarket we can use both the sight of shopping trolleys as well as their sound to best estimate how far we are and where we are supposed to turn.In contrast,children do not gain from using different sensory cues until very late (as late as 12 years of age depending on the task; Gori et al., 2012; Petrini et al., 2014).
Unsurprisingly, all of the developmental evidence so far has come from studies in which one of the sensory information sources under study was vision, as for typically sighted humans vision is a key component of most naturalistic tasks. However, visual impairments can reduce or even eliminate the visual input. In these cases, the use of other information, such as touch and sound, is vital and can substitute for vision (Pasqualotto and Proulx, 2012).
Sensory substitution devices allow blind persons to ‘see’ through sound or touch (Proulx et al, 2014), by transforming visual information into a representation that can be processed in another sensory modality. The use of tactile and auditory cues (e.g. Kim and Zatorre, 2010; 2011; Petrini et al., 2014) may crucially improve the encoding of visual information in blind persons; therefore it is essential to examine at what age blind children can gain from using the devise, as earlier training and intervention might be possible and optimal.
With the present project Dr Proulx and I aim to examine the efficiency of existing sensory substitution devises by testing their impact on blind children’s and adults’ ability to navigate the environment. The project will take place in the new Virtual Reality lab (7 x 10m) complete of a Vicon Bonita motion capture system in the new 10 West building. The project will build upon child-friendly paradigms previously developed by the applicant and others to study the development of spatial navigation (e.g., Nardini et al., 2008; Petrini et al., 2015, submitted). Tasks such aspath reproduction, triangle completion, and object relocationwill be used, with or without the sensory substitution device and with or without obstacles in the environment (to aid complexity and validity). The movement of each participant will be tracked in 3D coordinates by the motion capture system so that a precise measure of performance with and without the sensory substitution device can be obtained.
Dr Petrini is already supervising together with Dr Proulx a PhD student on a related project on blindness and visual impairments. The candidate will have opportunities to collaborate actively with staff in Computer Science, and the Centre for Digital Entertainment (where Dr. Proulx is supervising an EngD student).