• detecting and counting tones with a deviant frequency versus ignoring the tones during Braille reading,
• detecting a deviant tone in one ear while ignoring distracting sounds in the other, and
• sustaining attention to binaural sound localization in the azimuth domain.

Braille literacy requires associative coupling between phonics and the tactile experience of Braille. All of the subjects learned Braille after they became blind, and they had extensive experience associating the feel of the Braille fields and auditory instruction as to the lexical meaning of the tactile sensations.

Hence, the researchers suggest that Braille literacy is not primarily related to touch but rather lexical and that the lexical processor resides at least in part in left occipital. Accordingly, this leads to a belief that that acquisition of Braille literacy leads to expansion of the brain regions engaged by language during listening as well as reading. This outcome would have important implications for education in the blind, and by extension, rehabilitation in general.

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Contact: Donna Krupa
djkrupa1@aol.com
703-527-7357
American Physiological Society
12-Feb-2003