A review of a five-year research into the characteristics of effective search strategies and the contribution made by exploratory scanning to accurate perception, involving comparisons of blind and sighted individuals performing shape matching tasks by hand. Videotaping of hand movements combined with accuracy data in the experiments revealed that exploratory activity functions to focus attention and encode stimulus information so that what is learned and remembered about a shape is influenced by how it is explored. Exploratory activity seems to become more proficient and economical with experience, suggesting that the more accurate haptic perception of shape by blinded individuals might be linked to perceptual learning of better ways to explore the stimulus. Findings are considered in terms of implications for future research, especially in the area of braille reading.
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