ROUTE DESCRIPTIONS BY VISUALLY-IMPAIRED AND SIGHTED CHILDREN FROM MEMORY AND FROM MAPS

The study reported here investigated the quality and content of visual ly impaired and sighted children's descriptions of two routes around t heir schools from memory and by using a map (print or tactile). It fou nd that the descriptions from maps were generally poorer than those fr om memory, the descriptions of the visually impaired children containe d more information than and were qualitatively different from those of the sighted children, and the descriptions of the younger visually im paired children were less well specified than those of the older visua lly impaired children and the sighted children.