Studies involving congenitally blind adults shows that visual experience is not a mandatory prerequisite for the emergence of efficient numerical abilities. It remains however unknown whether blind adults developed lifelong strategies to compensate for the absence of foundations vision would provide in infancy. We therefore assessed basic numerical abilities in blind and sighted children of 6 to 13 years old. We also assessed verbal and spatial working memory abilities and their relationship with mental arithmetic in both groups. Blind children showed similar or better numerical abilities as compared to the sighted. Blind children also outperformed their sighted peers in every task assessing verbal working memory and demonstrated a similar spatial span. The correlation between arithmetic and the spatial sketchpad was stronger in blind relative to sighted children while the correlations between arithmetic and the other two components (the central executive and the phonological loop) were not affected by early visual experience. Our data suggest that early blindness does not impair the development of basic numerical competencies in children but influences the associations between arithmetic and some working memory subcomponents.

涉及先天性盲人的研究表明，视觉体验并不是有效数字能力出现的强制性先决条件。然而，尚不清楚的是，盲人成年人是否可以制定终身战略来弥补缺乏基础视力的问题，这些因素将在婴儿期提供。因此，我们评估了6至13岁失明和有视力儿童的基本数字能力。我们还评估了两组的口头和空间工作记忆能力及其与心理算术的关系。与视力障碍者相比，盲人儿童表现出相似或更好的数字能力。在评估言语工作记忆的每项任务中，盲人儿童的表现也优于有远见的同伴，并且表现出相似的空间跨度。相对于有视力的儿童，盲人的算术与空间画板之间的相关性更强，而算术与其他两个组成部分（中央执行和语音回路）之间的相关性不受早期视觉体验的影响。我们的数据表明，早期失明不会损害儿童基本数字能力的发展，但会影响算术和某些工作记忆子成分之间的关​​联。