The issue of the role of visual experience and imagery in the haptic perception of raised-line pictures by blind and sighted people is addressed by the present research. The thesis presents four experimental studies focusing on the perception of non figurative (simple line patterns) and figurative (expressive faces, common objects) tactile pictures. Results show that 1- Blind people can recognize simple patterns with the same accuracy level than sighted people. 2- Strategies used by blind people depend on their lifetime proportion without of visual experience. 3- There is no difference in performance between congenitally blind and sighted with figurative pictures perception. 4- Individuals with high visuospatial skills are more accurate than low imagers in identifying tactile pictures of common objects. In conclusion, haptic perception of tactile pictures, whether figurative or not, seems to be possible without recourse to visual experience or imagery. Our results suggest that the nature of mental imagery used in tactile picture comprehension tasks is subject-dependent (visual status, visual experience, visual imagery capacities). Perspectives regarding how to control for picture complexity control and how to analyze exploratory movements using an innovative technology are set up.
