Developing Spatial Ability among Visually Impaired Students

Abstract

Vision is the most obvious source of information we have. Spatial ability refers to skill in newlinerepresenting, transforming, generating and recalling symbolic, nonlinguistic information . Spatial newlineability is the possession of a coherent interval representation of space in which all activities, events newlineand objects having a relation to the physical world can be mentally placed, manipulated and newlineunderstood. Such a representation is often of a visual nature in man but not necessarily so. Millar newline(1994) expressed that like vision, touch and movement together provide information about shape, newlineconfigurations and the relation between the surfaces. Children without sight tend to use bodycentered newlinesurface frames as well as memory for movement information. Spatial ability is of newlineparamount importance to visually impaired children to learn science and mathematical concepts, newlineverbal and phonemic fluency, Orientation and Mobility and problem solving. newlineHence an attempt is made to study the spatial ability of Visually Impaired students which newlineintends to bring about specific information on the spatial tasks which require mental spatial newlinerecognition. The main goal of the study is to compare the spatial ability of visually impaired newlinestudents (Experimental Group) and Blind folded sighted (Control Group) with respect to spatial newlineskills through various tests viz., Distance Estimation, Mental rotation, Delineation, Assembling, newlineand Rotational Displacement in the Experimental study. Training in concepts such as shapes, sizes newlinedirectional and positional concept, raised line drawings and diagrams, estimation of distance newlinementally and manipulation of two and three and two dimensional objects were given for the newlineselected samples. Intervention package were developed to give a structured training. The study newlineresults suggest that visually impaired students could acquire spatial ability of structural training is newlinegiven.