Table 1.
Fig 1.
A. A side view of the EyeCane and the IR sensors that capture the distance to the object it is pointed at. B. A top view of the EyeCane showing the headphones that transfer the distance information to the user into sound. A built-in vibrating motor also codes this distance information. C. The five steps in the sensory-motor loop and an image of the user pointing the device.
Fig 2.
Experimental Setup 1 and Results.
A. A diagram of the maze with the correct path in blue and the error zones delimited by the dotted lines. B. A top-down view of the real world maze. C. A first- person view of the virtual world maze. Bottom Left Panel: Time averages for all participants in the real world maze (blue) and the virtual maze (green). Top Right Panel: Error averages for all participants in the real world maze (blue) and the virtual maze (green). Bottom Right Panel: Collision averages for all participants in the real maze (blue) and the virtual maze (green). Asterisks indicate the level of significance. *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001.
Fig 3.
Real World Experimental Setup 2 and Results.
A. A diagram of the maze with the correct path (in blue) and the error zones (dotted line). B. A top view of the real world maze. Top Left: Error averages for all participants in the real world maze. Dark blue indicates the performance on the first session, royal blue indicates the performance on the second session, and light blue on the third session in the real world mazes. Top Right: Collision averages for all participants in the real maze. Top Left: Time averages for all participants in the real world maze. Asterisks indicate the level of significance. *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001.Bottom Panels: Diagrams depicting the paths chosen by participants to complete the maze. Middle: All paths of the sighted full vision control participants. Left: Performance of participants on the first session in the real world maze. Right: Performance of participants on the third session in the real world maze.
Fig 4.
Virtual World Experimental Setup 2 and Results.
A. A diagram of the maze with the correct path (in blue) and the error zones (dotted line). B. A first- person view of the virtual maze at the entrance. Top Left: Error averages for all participants in the virtual world maze. Dark green indicates the performance on the first session, forest green the performance on the second day of training, and light green the performance on the third day of training. Top Right: Collision averages for all participants in the virtual maze. Top Left: Time averages for all participants in the virtual maze (green). Asterisks indicate the level of significance. *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001. Bottom Panels: Diagrams depicting the paths chosen by participants to complete the maze. Middle: All paths of the sighted full vision control participants. Left: Performance of participants on the first session in the virtual world maze. Right: Performance of participants on the third session in the virtual maze.
Fig 5.
Actual drawings of the solution to the maze by participants.
Examples of actual drawings of the paths by two participants from each blindfolded group (congenitally blind, LvLb, and the sighted blindfolded group) at the end of experimental sessions 1–3. Participants developed a more acurate mental representation of the spatial layout of the path to complete the maze over time.
Table 2.
Results Real Maze.
Table 3.
Results Virtual Maze.
Fig 6.
Real and Virtual performances on the last session.
Differences between the initial performance of the sighted full vision controls and the other groups on the third session. All statistical comparisons were made with the initial performance of the sighted full vision controls. *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001.