As a sighted person if I think of a word, it may either conjure up a pure concept (baby makes me think of the idea of a small human child) or a ‘picture’ of the letters B A B Y if I am thinking of how it is spelt.
What representations do blind from birth people have when they try to spell a letter in Braille- do they feel it in their fingers, or is it represented somewhere in their cortex?
Strictly speaking, anything you touch is represented in your brain, 'cause that’s where your brain processes sensory information.
Blind from birth? Could be either or even both, I’d think.
But some things are stored and manipulated as factual things and others have a quality of presence- what we ‘see’ in our head, what we ‘hear’ in our head that is different from simple knowledge. It is this experience that I am asking about.
Most people conjure the sound of the word. Truly visual people seem to be rare.
And this makes sense, since language is spoken first. I see no reason a visual representation is even needed.
Actually, many huge tomes, and thousands of academic papers, have been written on the nature of mental representation, and there is not a whole lot of agreement about it.
As far as the subjective experience of representation goes (which is what you seem to be getting at), there appear to be considerable individual differences even between ‘normal’ people, often for no very obvious physiological reason. I would be very surprised if some blind people did not claim that they experience their mental representation of “baby” in one or other of the ways you suggest (or in some cases in yet other ways, such as a mental image of a baby - for the congenitally blind that might be an auditory-olfactory-tactile image rather than visual). Most blind people (like most sighted people) will almost certainly tell you they experience all of those types of representation on occasion.
I am certainly aware, when asked to spell a word, of ‘seeing’ in my head the letters of a word. Am I alone in that? I am looking for the equivalent in blind from birth people. Do they ‘visualize’ the feel of braille dots when trying to remember how to spell a word.
No, you’re not alone in that visualization.
I would expect someone blind from birth whose only experience in reading is brailled would have a similar tactile sensation, though I don’t ever recall being in a position to ask someone that (the blind people I’ve known well weren’t blind from birth). Why wouldn’t they?
Sometimes, when I think of dialing a phone number or playing the piano I “visualize” them as hand motions rather than a string of numbers or notes on a score - if a sighted person such as myself can have such a “tactilization” why wouldn’t someone blind?
I agree. It seems so obvious, but I am trying to tie the idea to reality for something that I am writing. I have read around the area widely but have not seen this mentioned.
I do know that people who go blind after seeing (especially after early childhood so that complex representation is gained) are still able to visualis words even though they are currently unable to see the real world. And they are still able to bring to mind things that they have seen when able (although this fades with time).
I was hoping for a reply that leads on to a citable source.
Engram, n.:
1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram."
2. A particular memory in physical form. [Usage note: this term is no longer
in common use. Prior to Wilson and Magruder's historic discovery, the nature
of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists,
psychologists, and even computer scientists. In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson
and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved
conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of
thirty seven genetically transmitted cooperating TECO macros. Human memory
was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman coded uppercase-only
ASCII strings. Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that
time.]
-- New Century Unabridged English Dictionary,
3rd edition, 2007 A.D.
This should clear up any confusion.