© Hector Fellow Academy
1. April 2021
New publi­ca­tion by Rashi Pant

A study by Rashi Pant has been published in the journal Scien­tific Reports

A person's multi­sen­sory process­ing can be damaged for life by visual impair­ment in child­hood. Rashi Pant addressed the question of whether impair­ments in visual-haptic integra­tion in child­hood can recover.

One way to assess visual and multi­sen­sory functional recov­ery is to test their suscep­ti­bil­ity to known percep­tual illusions. Percep­tual illusions are typically robust, suggest­ing that they arise from automatic process­ing princi­ples. There­fore, the absence of percep­tion of a visual illusion is indica­tive of impaired visual or multi­sen­sory processing.

In the article "The size-weight illusion is unimpaired in individ­u­als with a history of congen­i­tal visual depri­va­tion", the researchers describe their research findings based on two separate exper­i­ments. In the exper­i­ments, the charp­en­tier­ian percep­tual illusion (also called the size-weight illusion) was tested in differ­ent subjects. Size-weight illusions occur when sighted people compare two objects of equal weight and perceive the one with the largest volume as lighter.

From the exper­i­ments, it appears that a previ­ous aberrant vision does not affect charp­en­tier­ian percep­tion. These results provide strong evidence that the visual-haptic processes, even without visual experi­ence, can develop normally.

Congrat­u­la­tions to Rashi Pant!