Night

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ScienceDirect Procedia Computer Science 65 (2015) 484 – 491

International Conference on Communication, Management and Information Technology (ICCMIT 2015)

The development of knowledge about the earth and the day/night cycle in blind and sighted children using acoustical rendition of documents’ visual elements Kalliopi Eikospentakia,b,*, Dimitrios Tsonosc, Georgios Kouroupetroglou ͨ, Stella Vosniadoua ͣ University of Athens, Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Panepistimioupolis,GR-15771 Athens, Greece b A.C.Metropolitan College, 74th Sorou, Marousi, Athens, Greece c University of Athens, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, Panepistimioupolis,GR-15784 Athens, Greece

Abstract During this study we planned an alternative teaching process, designed and based οn inclusion, for tutoring the basic concepts of Observational Astronomy (OA) in an elementary school, taking into consideration the difficulties faced by both congenitally blind and sighted students. Following basic design-for-all principles, during a forty-five minutes teaching process, in which ten congenitally blind and ten sighted students participated, the educational material was presented in both visual and acoustic modalities, using an interactive whiteboard. An interview was then followed with each student in order to investigate their understanding of the scientific concepts of OA. The results of this study showed that congenitally blind and sighted students, after this alternative teaching process, experienced less difficulty in understanding the concepts of OA. © 2015 The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier B.V. © 2015 byby Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Universal Society for Applied Research. Peer-review under responsibility of Universal Society for Applied Research Keywords: Blind children; understanding of scientific concepts; document accessibility; alternative teaching process

* Kalliopi Eikospentaki. Tel.: +30-210-7275506; fax: +30-210-7275004. Email address: [email protected]

1877-0509 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of Universal Society for Applied Research doi:10.1016/j.procs.2015.09.119

Kalliopi Eikospentaki et al. / Procedia Computer Science 65 (2015) 484 – 491

1. The development of children’s ideas about the earth A series of previous studies that investigated the development of sighted children’s ideas about the earth have shown that young children have considerable difficulty in understanding the scientific concept of the earth as a rotating sphere in space revolving around the sun1,2,3,4,5,6. Some children give internally inconsistent (mixed or fragmented) responses, but most construct internally consistent but alternative models of the earth, such as the model of the dual earth, according to which there are two earths - a flat one on which people live and a spherical one which is a planet up in the sky- the hollow sphere, according to which people live on flat ground inside a spherical earth, and the flattened sphere according to which people live on the flat top of an earth/sphere. According to Vosniadou and Brewer4 young children start with an initial model of a flat, rectangular or disk shaped flat, supported and stationary earth with the sky and solar objects located above its top which is based on perceptual experience and shows no exposure to the normative model. In the process of learning science they construct alternative models of the earth which are ‘synthetic’ because they integrate aspects of the scientific information, according to which the earth is a spherical astronomical object in space, with aspects of the initial model of a flat, stationary and supported earth/ground. Vosniadou and her colleagues4,5,6,7,8 have argued that these synthetic conceptions are formed because young children categorize the earth as a physical object and apply to it all the presuppositions that apply to physical objects in general. In other words, presuppositions such as solidity, stability, up/down organization of space and up/down gravity9,10, constrain children’s understanding of the normative concept and are responsible for the generation of misconceptions. For example, children believe that people live inside a hollow sphere or on the top part of the sphere (sphere without gravity) because this model is consistent with an up/down gravity presupposition. Conceptual change is seen as a gradual process of change as children revise their beliefs and presuppositions allowing for the creation of mental representations of the earth which are closer to the scientific model. In support of this interpretation, studies by Vosniadou and Skopeliti7 have shown that there is a re-categorization of the earth that takes place during the elementary school years from a physical object at 1st grade to an astronomical object (by 6th grade) which is highly correlated with children’s understanding of the spherical shape of the earth. More specifically, according to the results of previous studies 6,7,8,11, the reason why children cannot solve the conceptualization problem immediately and easily is because their existing beliefs prevent them from recognizing the normative model as a plausible model of the earth. The children need additional information which will allow them to revise the beliefs that hinder their understanding of the normative model. The culmination of this revision process is the re-categorizaton of the earth as an astronomical object, which carries with it the possibility to imagine the earth as a spherical planet in space and understand its relationship to the earth/ground. In this process, additional cognitive skills need to develop which involve development of children’s perspective taking ability 12, representational growth and epistemological sophistication13, which however, are related to their development of domain specific knowledge about the earth (i.e., that the earth is an astronomical object in space, rotating and revolving around the sun in a heliocentric system). 2. Review of the literature on the cognitive abilities of children with visual impairment While visually impaired children can obtain information about their environment, a cognitive limitation does exist in the range and variety of experiences they can have. Lack of vision may result in delays and/or limitations in motor, cognitive, and social development. Without visual input, an infant may not be motivated to reach and move towards interesting objects in the environment14. A child with a visual impairment cannot perceive objects in the environment beyond his or her gasp, including those that are too large or too small or are moving 15. A great deal of information about the environment can be provided through touch, but it is often difficult for a child with a visual impairment to combine that information in order to have the ability to orient to environmental cues and travel freely15. Congenitally blind children are obviously incapable of using visual information to understand the physical world. Although they may derive information from other senses the lack of visual information can have very serious implications for cognitive functioning. Visual imagery is known to aid memory16, and may be especially useful in

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coping with complex imagery tasks17. Moreover, the nature of processing might differ between the sighted and the congenitally blind children. Nevertheless, there is evidence that suggests that information from other senses may be used to substitute for a lack of vision and be used to form some kind of mental representation of the physical world 18. Persons who became blind early in life are able to perform some tasks of mental imagery at the same level of performance and with the same characteristics as do sighted persons, even if they have no visual experience and know their environment only through non visual modalities. Marmor and Zaback19 and Carpenter and Eisenberg20 showed that persons who became blind early in life were able to mentally rotate and compare images of objects that they have previously explored tactilely and their reaction times increased with the angular discrepancy between shapes, as it did in sighted persons do. Blind children may have had minimal experience with adopting viewpoints other than those of their own when interpreting spatial relations and have far less experience with maps and pictures than sighted children21. In addition, blind persons are likely to have considerable difficulty with mental rotation tasks, even though they have been tutored in generating left-right reversals when producing Braille22. The classic mental rotation paradigm used with sighted subjects by Shepard and Metzler23, was used by Carpenter and Eisenberg20 to test blind adolescents ranging in age from 15 to 18 years on a tactual version of the same task. The typical mental rotation function was found, with reaction times increasing regularly from an upright to a 180degree rotation. There was no difference between subjects with and without previous visual experience. These results suggest that cognitive operations on tactually encoded information about orientation are similar to those used by sighted subjects for visually encoded information. Millar24 used a similar mental rotation task with younger blind children ranging in age from 6 to 11 years. Performance improved somewhat with increasing age, but it was clear that mental rotation was a source of difficulty since performance was significantly better on a comparable task that did not require it. Ittyerah and Samarapungavan25 used a similar, but even more sophisticated task with younger congenitally blind children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years old. The results showed that the younger children performed almost at chance, but there was considerable improvement with age. It is evident from the above findings that children with visual impairments can perform tasks requiring mental rotation. Furthermore, some of the above mentioned research shows evidence that these tasks can be accomplished by forming and manipulating a topological mental image. Experiments with congenitally blind children have shown that such images can be based on tactual information, although this is a more difficult task than performance with vision15. According to Kephart, Kephart, & Schwartz26, older children can gradually learn how to form and use topological mental images concerning their surroundings. They asked five to seven-year-old blind children questions about their rooms within their houses and the overall layout of their houses, neighborhoods and towns. There was an improvement in the quality of children’s knowledge with increasing age and generally there was an age-related tendency to broaden the scope of knowledge from the room to the house to the neighborhood. Kephart et al. 26 argued that the nature and quality of blind children’s spatial knowledge was closely related to the extent of their experience, and they suggested that carefully constructed experiential intervention might succeed in creating a broader base of spatial knowledge. 3. The development of visually impaired children’s ideas about the earth According to the results of a previous study11 visually impaired children had great difficulties understanding the normative model of a spherical earth in space. It was rather interesting to find that the visually impaired children were able to create models of the earth using play dough which were similar in kind to those of the sighted children. By itself, these findings indicate that despite their total lack of visual experiences, visually impaired children receive enough information from their other senses as well as from lay culture to create some form of mental representation of the physical world11, 6. With respect the earth, it appears that they are capable of forming a representation of the earth as a flat, stationary, physical object with the solar objects located above its top. The disk shaped and sphere without gravity models that these children created showed that the presuppositions of flatness and up/down gravity constrained whatever information they received from the culture regarding the normative model, just as they did in the case of sighted children, in line with the theoretical arguments put forward by Vosniadou and her colleagues 4,6,8. Unlike the sighted children, however, the models of the visually impaired children were very limited. They constructed only the models of a flat disk and a sphere without gravity, and their verbal responses were less


informative and more stereotypical than those of the children without visual impairment. The latter constructed more elaborate and imaginative models and whose verbal responses indicated, at least in some cases, an effort to reconcile conflicting pieces of information. 4. The present study 4.1. The use of an alternative educational process Based on results such as the ones described above, in this study we planned an alternative teaching process, designed and based on inclusion, for tutoring the basic concepts of Observational Astronomy in an elementary school, taking into consideration the difficulties faced by both student groups in which would participate, sighted and congenitally blind children27. Teaching concepts of Observational Astronomy in elementary school includes the use of books containing scientific texts and documents. Usually the texts and the documents used in textbooks cite scientific information, without taking into account children’s existing knowledge and misconceptions, something that several studies showed 6,8,11,28 prevent the full understanding of scientific concepts and explanations of natural phenomena. As already mentioned, these difficulties are multiplied for visual impaired children who are taught the scientific concepts by books that have been written so as to meet the needs of sighted children, using texts which are considered incomprehensible and are explained only partly by relevant images that cannot be seen by this particular student population. 4.2. Acoustic rendition οf document’s visual elements A document29,30, in printed or electronic format, is considered the medium to communicate information. Newspapers, magazines, student’s textbook, presentation slides, webpages are a few examples. Their content is arranged using visual elements from a) Layout, b) Logical and/or c) Typographic layer 31. Terms, like readability, legibility, and accessibility are associated to these presentation elements and especially to typography (e.g. font type, style, size, color). For print-disabled persons, e.g. individuals with vision impairment, it is very difficult to have access to this kind of information. For example, a cognitively blind student, who uses a Text-to-Speech (TtS) system to read a document, does not have access to document’s visual presentation elements, because current TtS systems strip off any visual information. The acoustic rendition of visual elements using TtS systems, e.g. altering the prosody, inserting non-speech sound (earcons), constitutes the next generation of TtS system called DocumenttoAudio (DtA)31. An architecture for the multimodal accessibility of documents in classroom, focusing on the acoustic modality, is presented in 31. In present study, during alternative educational process, the acoustic rendition of font size and font style elements is realized using prosody alterations (pitch, rate, volume) of synthetic speech based on specific mapping rules. The DtA platform, presented in 31, was used which is based on DEMOSTHeNES TtS system32,33. 4.3. Hypothesis Based on the review presented above, we hypothesized that an alternative teaching process with the use of the acoustic representation of the visual metadata combined with the representation of the corresponding visual material through an interactive whiteboard would help both groups - but especially that of congenitally blind children - to understand the difficult concepts of observational astronomy and scientific explanation for the shape of the Earth, and would reduce the differences in performance between the two groups. 5. Method 5.1. Participants Ten congenitally blind and ten sighted children participated in this study. The congenitally blind children were students in the Special Primary School at the Center of Education and Rehabilitation of Blind People in Athens. The congenitally blind children attended Grade 4 (mean age 10 years and 2 months. The sighted children were students in

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a middle-class school in central Athens and they also attended Grade 4 (mean age 9 years and 4 months). The difference in ages between congenitally blind and sighted children was due to the fact that some blind children delayed attending primary school, in order to learn the Braille writing. Written permission was obtained from the Pedagogical Institute and by children’s parents for their participation in this school project designed and based on inclusion and for the testing. 5.2. Materials We constructed several presentation slides which constituted the education material. Each slide contains the title (larger font size than the body of text), plain text, specific terms in bold - which stood for the scientific concepts of Observational Astronomy - and images. The acoustic rendition of the slides was realized using the DtA platform. The slides were simultaneously presented in both visual and acoustic modality, using an interactive whiteboard. There was also a detailed acoustic description of the images in order to be perceived by the congenitally blind students. 5.3. Procedure This alternative educational process was realized in a classroom, where all twenty congenitally blind and sighted students were together. Firstly, the necessary instructions were given to the students. They were asked not to talk to each other and to concentrate as much as possible to the information they were to hear. Particularly the sighted students were asked, since it was an inclusive educational process and since they were able not only to listen to the text but also to see the slides and the images, to be a little more careful and not to distract the congenitally blind children, who were able only to hear the scientific information from the slides. However no information was given about the speech changes (pitch, rate and/or volume) during the representation of bold and title, since we did not want children to be familiarized to these changes. This process lasted 45 minutes. An individual interview was then followed with each student, both congenitally blind and sighted, which lasted about 20 minutes and was based on questions relevant to the scientific concepts of Observational Astronomy, in order to investigate student’s understanding of these scientific concepts. It consisted of a total of 14 questions which are shown in Table 1. 6. Results 6.1. Student’s responses to the questionnaire Students’ responses to the questionnaire were first scored by one experimenter who constructed a scoring key. A second experimenter used it to score the responses a second time. Interscorer reliability was 99%. All disagreements were discussed until agreement. In order to analyze these data statistically children responses were marked as (1) for each response that included a single piece of information or scientific explanation while the children had seen or heard much more, as (2) for each response that was not complete, that did not contain all the information or scientific explanations had seen or heard and as (3) for each answer that was complete and consistent with the scientific explanations. When the students answered “I do not know” or “I do not remember”, their responses were marked as (0). A total score, that reflected each student’s overall performance, was aggregated. The mean and the standard deviation of their performance are shown at the following table. From Table 1 we can conclude that there is a small difference between congenitally blind and sighted students’ performances.

Table 1. Means and Standard Deviation of Students’ Performance

Mean

Congenitally Blind Students 4.80

Sighted Students 5.70

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Kalliopi Eikospentaki et al. / Procedia Computer Science 65 (2015) 484 – 491 Standard Deviation

1.160

1.033

Total

10

10

6.2. Earth shape models In order to see whether the students understood the spherical model of the earth or not, we selected five questions the answers to which were found in previous studies to critically differentiate amongst the different possible representations of the earth, following the same procedure as in previous work 6. Table 2 shows the expected pattern of responses to these five questions for the five possible models of the earth. Table 2. Models of the earth: pattern of responses Questions/ Models Q 1: What is the Q2: Does the earth shape of the earth? lean on something?

Q3: What is the Earth?

Q4: The Earth is like a sphere, but it looks as it is flat. Why?

Q5: Can people live at “the bottom of the Earth” without falling of it?

The Earth is one of the The Earth is nine planets of the solar a sphere, but system as we can seen only a small part, it looks as it is flat The Earth is a planet The Earth is a sphere, but as we can seen only a small part, it looks as it is flat The Earth is a planet, but The Earth looks flat inside there is the land because we where we live on. live in it

Yes, people can live at “the bottom of the Earth” because there is gravity

Sphere

Round like a ball

No, it doesn’t

Sphere without gravity

Round like a ball

Yes, it does

Hollow Sphere

Round like a ball

Yes/No

Earth-Disc

Round/Circle

Yes, it does

The Earth is a planet that looks like a circle

The Earth is flat

No, people cannot live at “the bottom of the Earth”

Flat/Square or Rectangular earth

Square/Rectangular

Yes, it does

The Earth is a planet that The Earth is looks like a square flat



People do not live at “the bottom of the Earth”, they live “inside the Earth”

The responses of each child to these questions were reviewed and graded in relation to the expected scientific response pattern. As shown in Table 3, the congenitally blind students’ answers were consistent with the model of the sphere (9/10, 90%) and the model of the sphere without gravity (1/10, 10%). The majority of sighted students’ answers were consistent with the spherical model of the Earth (sphere) (8/10, 80%) and the model of the sphere without gravity (2/10, 20%). Τhe table below shows that there were no differences between sighted and congenitally blind students’ answers, which leads us to conclude that the alternative teaching process using the acoustic representation of the visual metadata combined with the representation of the corresponding visual material was probably effective as much for the sighted as for congenitally blind children and helped all participants to understand the spherical shape of the Earth and its scientific explanation. Table 3. Frequency/Percent of Students Placed in the Different Models of the Earth Congenitally Blind Students

Sighted Students

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9/10 (90%)

8/10 (80%)

Sphere without gravity

1/10 (10%)

2/10 (20%)

Total

10

10

7. Conclusions The results supported our hypothesis that the alternative teaching process combining documents’ visual and acoustical presentation through an interactive whiteboard would be equally effective for both students group and particularly would help the congenitally blind students much more so that their performance would be similar to sighted students’. According to the results, both congenitally blind and sighted students didn’t have difficulties in understanding the scientific explanation for the shape of the earth. The majority of the participants (9/10 of the congenital blind students and 8/10 of the sighted students) have understood the spherical shape of the Earth and from their answers to the critical five questions seemed to have also understood the scientific explanations. These findings lead us to believe that the alternative teaching process was as effective as to equalize the performance of congenitally blind and sighted students and to eliminate any problems that may be faced by both groups to understand difficult scientific information. It could be also argued, therefore, that the alternative teaching process and the particularly the acoustic rendition of texts’ font size, font style elements and pictures was more effective for the congenitally blind students as their performance was equated with that of sighted students. References 1. Nussbaum J. Children’s conception of the earth as a cosmic body: A cross age study. Scientific Education 1979;63:83-93. 2. Nussbaum J, Novak JD. An assessment of children’s concepts of the earth utilizing structured interviews. Science Education 1976;60:535550. 3. Larsson A, Hallden O. A structural view on the emergence of a conception: emergence of a conceptual change as radical reconstruction of contexts. Science Education 2009;94:640-664. 4. Vosniadou S, Brewer W. Mental models of the Earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood. Cognitive Psychology 1992;24:535-585. 5. Vosniadou S, Brewer W. Mental models of the day/night cycle. Cognitive Science, 1994;18:123-183. 6. Vosniadou S, Skopeliti I, Eikospentaki K. Modes of knowing and ways of reasoning in Elementary Astronomy. Cognitive Development 2004;19:203-222. 7. Vosniadou S, Skopeliti I, Eikospentaki, K. Reconsidering the role of Artifacts in Reasoning: Children’s Understanding of the Globe as a Model of the Earth. Learning and Instruction 2005;15:333-351. 8. Vosniadou S, Vamvakoussi X, & Skopeliti I. The framework theory approach to the problem of conceptual change. In: S. Vosniadou S., editor. International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2008. p. 3-34. 9. Baillargeon R. A model of physical reasoning in infancy. In: Rovee-Collier C., Lipsitt L., editors. Advances in infancy research. vol. 9, Norwood, NJ: Ablex; 1995. p. 305-371. 10. Spelke, E. Physical knowledge in infancy: Reflections o Piaget’s theory. In: Carey S., Gelman R., editors. Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1991. p. 133-170. 11. Eikospentaki K,Vosniadou S. The Development of Knowledge about the Earth in Children with Visual Impairments. The Olla Hallden’s Friends Book (ed.), University of Sweden, 2011. p. 68-95. 12. Piaget, J. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Basic Books; 1954. 13. Wiser M, Smith C. Learning and teaching about matter in grade K-8: When should the atomic-molecular theory be introduced? In: Vosniadou S., editor. International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2008. p. 205-239. 14. Fraiberg S. Insights from the blind: Comparative studies of blind and sighted infants. New York: Basic Books; 1977. 15. Warren H. D. Blindness and Children: An Individual Differences Approach. Cambridge University Press; 1994. 16. Paivio A. Abstractness, imagery, and meaningfulness in paired-associate learning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 1965;4:3238. 17. Cirnoldi C, Vecchi, T. Mental imagery in blind people: The role of passive and active visuo-spatial processes. In: Heller M.A., editor. Touch, representation and blindness. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000. p. 143-181. 18. Millar S. Understanding and Representing Space. Oxford University Press; 1994. 19. Marmor G.S, & Zaback L.A. Mental rotation by the blind: Does mental rotation depend on visual imagery? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception 1976;2:512-521. 20. Carpenter P. A, Eisenberg P. Mental rotation and the frame of reference in blind and sighted individuals. Perception & Psychophysics 1978;23:117-124. 21. Heller M. A, Ballesteros S. Touch and Blindness, Psychology and Neuroscience. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 2006.

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