Irina Blinnikova

The contemporary approaches to the problem of visual-spatial experience interaction in mental representations were discussed. The possibility of spatial representations forming without visual experience as well the meaning of extended practical and "pure motor" experience for this forming were tested in the experiments. The results showed that most phenomena of the spatial representations have been expressed without early visual experience in environs. The regress of these characteristics may be eliminated by the extended experience of environs. Nevertheless the accurate analysis of the cognitive maps of congenitally and adventitiously blind subjects and sighted ones in different experimental situations has shown that visual experience is necessary for the functional links between the spatial representations. These data disprove the opinion that the visual and spatial representations are the independent systems.