Browsing by Author "Holbrook, M. Cay"

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    A position paper on researching braille in the cognitive sciences: decentering the sighted norm
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Englebretson, Robert; Holbrook, M. Cay; Fischer-Baum, Simon
    This article positions braille as a writing system worthy of study in its own right and on its own terms. We begin with a discussion of the role of braille in the lives of those who read and write it and a call for more attention to braille in the reading sciences. We then give an overview of the history and development of braille, focusing on its formal characteristics as a writing system, in order to acquaint sighted print readers with the basics of braille and to spark further interest among reading researchers. We then explore how print-centric assumptions and sight-centric motivations have potentially negative consequences, not only for braille users but also for the types of questions researchers think to pursue. We conclude with recommendations for conducting responsible and informed research about braille. We affirm that blindness is most equitably understood as but one of the many diverse ways humans experience the world. Researching braille literacy from an equity and diversity perspective provides positive, fruitful insights into perception and cognition, contributes to the typologically oriented work on the world’s writing systems, and contributes to equity by centering the perspectives and literacy of the people who read and write braille.
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    The primacy of morphology in English braille spelling: an analysis of bridging contractions
    (Springer Nature, 2024) Englebretson, Robert; Holbrook, M. Cay; Treiman, Rebecca; Fischer-Baum, Simon
    This study examines the use of braille contractions in a corpus of spelling tests from braille-reading children in grades 1-4, with particular attention to braille contractions that create mismatches with morphological structure. Braille is a tactile writing system that enables people who are blind or visually impaired to read and write. In English and many other languages, reading and writing braille is not simply a matter of transliterating between print letters and their braille equivalents; Unified English Braille (the official braille system used in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other English-speaking countries) contains 180 contractions—one or more braille cells that represent whole words or strings of letters. In some words, the prescriptive rules for correct braille usage cause contractions to bridge morphological boundaries and to obscure the spellings of stems and affixes. We demonstrate that, when the prescriptive rules for correct braille usage flout morphological structure, young braille spellers generally follow the morphology rather than the orthographic rules. This work establishes that morphology matters for young braille learners. We discuss the potential impact of our findings on braille research, development, and pedagogy, and we suggest ways in which our findings contribute to understanding the nature of orthographic morphemes and the place of braille in the reading sciences.