ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effects of early visual deprivation on the reaction to a spatial change following locomotor exploration of an environment that contained a set of objects at fixed locations. It focuses on the spontaneous patterns of exploration so as to determine if a specific pattern of exploration could be related to a specific level of performance. The data lend support to the view that performance depends on the use of specific exploratory patterns. The early blind participants’ preferential use of cyclic patterns seems to result in a rough encoding of spatial information, in the form of a sequence of visits, or route. The high performance level associated with recourse to Back and Forth patterns suggests that spatial relationships between pairs of places are precisely evaluated. In view of the accurate detection of the changes, one must assume that these fragmented representations, resulting from piecemeal exploration, are integrated into a more comprehensive overall representation, or map.
