Orientador: Prof(a). Dr(a). Aniela Improta França
Páginas: 226
Resumo
With the aim of analyzing syntactic processing and the
effects of other cognitive modules that may interfere with this processing, to the point of generating
disengagement, such as working memory, this study proposes a comparison between congenitally
blind people and sighted people. Blind individuals admittedly develop tactile and verbal working
memory more powerful than that of individuals with residual vision and far superior to that of
sighted ones, in addition, the performance in linguistic tasks – semantic and syntactic – has been
reported as superior to sighted ones (Cohen et al 2010; Alary, 2009; Amedi et al, 2003, 2004; Bliss
et al 2004; D’Angiulli A, Waraich P 2002; Loiotile et al, 2020).
In the present study we compared the processing of ambiguous structures in congenitally blind
people through psycholinguistic experiments of self-monitored listening and reading, as well as a
verbal working memory experiment. Our findings show that blind people perform better on
sentence processing tasks compared to sighted participants matched for age and education level, as
well as younger participants.
The results shed light on the interaction/intervention of modules from other cognitions, such as
working memory, and effects of stimulus presentation (auditory or reading) on sentence processing.
Through the findings, we hope to value the capabilities of blind people, thus reducing the abyss
created by ableism, deepening theories and models of sentence processing.