READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Visual Symbols and the Blind
视觉符号与盲人
Part 1
第一部分
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 figures until about 1877.
最近的一系列研究表明，盲人可以理解用轮廓线和透视图表示的物体排列及空中的其他表面。但是图片表达的意思更胜于文字表述。当我研究的一位盲人女性自发地划出一个正在滚动的车轮时，这个现象极大地吸引了我的注意。为了展示车轮的运动，她在圆的中心画了一条曲线。我被吓了一跳。表示运动的线，例如她刚画的这条，是插图史上最近才有的发明。事实上，正如艺术学者David Kunzle所说，引领了19世纪潮流的卡通画家Wilhelm Busch直到1877年之前都没有在他最流行的人物形象中使用动态线条。
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. 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.
当我要求其他接受研究的盲人画一个滚动的轮子时，一种很聪明的画法反复出现了：一些盲人把车轮的辐条画成了曲线。当被问到这些曲线时，他们都说这是一种表示运动的比喻手法。多数人规则，会认为，这种方式可以很好地表示运动。但是对于这种现象。会不会有种更好的表示方法，例如虚线和波浪线，或其他形式的线呢？答案还不明确。所以我决定测试各种表示运动的线条分别适合表示哪种运动，或者也许它们只是一些特殊符号。而且，我想要发现盲人和普通人眼中表示运动的线条有没有什么区别。
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 perimeter 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.
为了找出答案，我用凸起的线条画出了五个轮子，分别把辐条画成了曲线、折线、波浪线、虚线和伸出车轮的线。接着，我请18位盲人志愿者触摸轮子，并请他们把每个轮子对应在以下运动中：摇晃、迅速转动、稳定转动、颠簸或刹车。我的对照组由18多伦多大学的普通大学生组成。
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.
除了其中一人，所有的盲人都把不同的运动与轮子相对应了。大部分人猜测曲线辐条表示轮子在平稳转动，波浪辐条表示车轮在摇晃，折线车轮表示车子受到颠簸。受试者猜测，辐条伸出车轮边缘表示轮子处于刹车状态，而虚线表示轮子在快速转动。
In addition, the favored description for the sighted was the favored 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 meanings for each line of motion, but as a group they generally came up with the same meaning at least as frequently as did sighted subjects.
另外，普通人喜爱的表达与盲人喜爱的表达基本一致。而且普通人之间的共识度并不比盲人高。因为盲人对运动装置并不熟悉，所以我给他们的任务中也包括解决一些问题。但是，很明显，盲人不仅搞明白了线条运动的意义，而且作为一个团队，他们达成共识的普遍频率也不比普通人低。
Part 2
第二部分
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 that 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 a square. For example, we asked: What goes with soft? A circle or a square? Which shape goes with hard?
我们发现，盲人也能理解其他种类的视觉符号。一个盲人女性在一个心形中间画了一个小孩——她说，选择这个符号，是为了表示孩子被爱包围。于是我和一个中国博士生刘长虹开始研究：盲人对于心形这样不直接表达含义的符号背后的意义，到底理解到了什么样的程度。我们给了普通人20对单词，并要求他们在每一对单词中选择一个代表圆圈的和一个代表方框的。比方说，我们问：哪个表示柔软呢？圆圈还是方框？哪个又表示坚硬？
All our subjects deemed the circle soft and the square hard. A full 94% ascribed happy to the circle, instead of sad. But other pairs revealed less agreement: 79% matched fast to slow and weak to strong, respectively. And only 51% 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 square and ‘near’ to 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 as sighted people do.
所有的受试者都认为圆形表示柔软而方块表示坚硬。94%的人认为开心与圆形对应，而不是悲伤。也有一些词组出现了不同的意见：79%的人在快-慢和强-弱对比上意见分别一致。而只有51%的人认为圆形表示深，方形表示浅。当我们用完全一样的列表测试四个完全看不到的盲人时，我们发现他们的选择与普通人的选择非常相似。有个先天失明的人做得特别好。他只有一次连线与之前的移至答案不同，那就是把“远”与方联系起来，把近和圆联系起来。事实上，只有刚刚53%的普通人在远近上给出了相反的答案。因此，我们可以得出结论：盲人可以像普通人一样理解抽象图案的意义。
