Simultaneous reading of braille with the two hands: reply to Millar (1987)

Millar (1987) argues that when braille readers scan a passage of text with the two hands side by side, the reading fingers actually alternate contacts with the letters. Reanalysis of her data shows that they provide little support for that claim. On the other hand, unlike a majority of the subjects studied by Bertelson et al. (1985), Millar's subjects do apparently not engage in simultaneous exploration of the end of one line and the beginning of the next one by different fingers. The suggestion offered by Millar that our findings result from an inadequate analysis of the data is rejected. The difference between the two sets of data should for the time being be considered as reflecting genuine differences between the populations that were sampled in the two studies.