Answers for Visual Symbols and the Blind - IELTS Reading Test

Part 1
From a number of recent studies, it has become clear that blind people can appreciate the use of outlines and perspectives to describe the arrangement of objects and other surfaces in space.

But pictures are more than literal representations. This fact was drawn to my attention dramatically when a blind woman in one of my investigations decided on her own initiative to draw a wheel as it was spinning. To show this motion, she traced a curve inside the circle (Fig. 1). I was taken aback; lines of motion, such as the one she used, are a very recent invention in the history of illustration. Indeed, as art scholar David Kunzle notes, Wilhelm Busch, a trend-setting nineteenth-century cartoonist, used virtually no motion lines in his popular figure until about 1877.

When I asked several other blind study subjects to draw a spinning wheel, one particularly clever rendition appeared repeatedly: several subjects showed the wheel's spokes as curved lines. When asked about these curves, they all described them as metaphorical ways of suggesting motion. The majority rule would argue that this device somehow indicated motion very well. But was it a better indicator than, say, broken or wavy lines or any other kind of line, for that matter? The answer was not clear. So, I decided to test whether various lines of motion were apt ways of showing movement or if they were merely idiosyncratic marks. Moreover, I wanted to discover whether there were differences in how the blind and the sighted interpreted lines of motion.

To search out these answers, I created raised-line drawings of five different wheels, depicting spokes with lines that curved, bent, waved, dashed and extended beyond the perimeters of the wheel. I then asked eighteen blind volunteers to feel the wheels and assign one of the following motions to each wheel: wobbling, spinning fast, spinning steadily, jerking or braking. My control group consisted of eighteen sighted undergraduates from the University of Toronto.

All but one of the blind subjects assigned distinctive motions to each wheel. Most guessed that the curved spokes indicated that the wheel was spinning steadily; the wavy spokes, they thought, suggested that the wheel was wobbling, and the bent spokes were taken as a sign that the wheel was jerking. Subjects assumed that spokes extending beyond the wheel's perimeter signified that the wheel had its brakes on and that dashed spokes indicated the wheel was spinning quickly. 

In addition, the favoured description for the sighted was a favoured description for the blind in every instance. What is more, the consensus among the sighted was barely higher than that among the blind. Because motion devices are unfamiliar to the blind, the task I gave them involved some problem-solving. Evidently, however, the blind not only figured out the meaning for each of the motions, but as a group, they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.

Part 2

We have found that the blind understand other kinds of visual metaphors as well. One blind woman drew a picture of a child inside a heart-choosing symbol, she said, to show that love surrounded the child. With Chang Hong Liu, a doctoral student from china, I have begun exploring how well blind people understand the symbolism behind shapes such as hearts that do not directly represent their meaning. 
We gave a list of twenty pairs of words to sighted subjects and asked them to pick from each pair the term that best related to a circle and the term that best related to assuring. For example, we asked: what goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?

All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle instead of sad. However, other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. Only 51% were linked deep to circle and shallow to square. (see Fig. 2) When we tested four totally blind volunteers using the same list, we found that their choices closely resembled those made by the sighted subjects. One man, who had been blind since birth, scored extremely well. He made only one match differing from the consensus, assigning 'far' to the square and 'near' to the circle. In fact, only a small majority of sighted subjects, 53%, had paired far and near to the opposite partners. Thus, we concluded that the blind interpret abstract shapes the same way sighted people do. 

Questions 26-30

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-K, below.
Write the correct letter, A-K, in boxes 26-30 on your answer sheet.

A. included a symbol representing movement.
B. depicts that the brakes are on.
C. can recognise conventions such as perspective.
D. steady spinning
E. may be interested in studying art.
F. got better results than the sighted undergraduates.
G. had a good understanding of symbols representing movement.
H. did not understand what a wheel looked like.
I.  was the first person to use lines of motion.
J. rapid spinning.
K. wobbling movement

Questions 31-39

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 31-39 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

Question 40

Choose the correct letter (A, B, C or D) from the given options.
Which of the following statements best summarises the writer's general conclusion?
A. The blind represent some aspects of reality differently from sighted people.
B. The blind comprehend visual metaphors in similar ways to sighted people.
C. The blind may create unusual and effective symbols to represent reality.
D. The blind may be successful artists if given the right training.

Click here for Reading Passage 1
Click here for Reading Passage 2