Are there relationships among different spatial skills of individuals with blindness?

Koustriava et al. (2012) tested the adults who had been blind since birth.

They gave each person five touch-and-move tasks that map different spatial skills.

Tasks started simple: knowing where your own body parts are.

They ended hard: taking someone else’s view of a room.

The team then ran stats to see which skills predict the others.

Body knowledge and left-right sense came first.

These two skills alone explained most of the later variance.

When body and direction skills were strong, perspective-taking scores jumped.

The chain looked like a ladder: body → direction → complex maps.

No skill skipped a rung; each needed the one below.

Hilton et al. (2010) and Chou et al. (2010) found the same ladder effect in kids with intellectual disability.

They showed that tiny core skills—like hearing sounds in words—predict reading later.

Eleni’s blind adults mirror this: small early skills unlock bigger ones, just in the spatial world.

Poppes et al. (2016) seems to disagree at first glance.

Their autistic sample had weak phonological memory but normal spatial memory.

The studies don’t clash; they map different roads.

P et al. split memory by sound vs. space, while Eleni tracks how spatial skills build on each other within one sense: touch.

If you teach a blind learner, start with body games: touching knees, crossing mid-line, naming left and right.

Only after those are firm should you move to map routes or imagine other views.

You save time because you are building the real foundation first.