Visual deprivation for a short (e.g., 90 minutes), medium (e.g., 5 days) or long (e.g., blindness) duration increases the neural response to, and behavioural accuracy with, a tactile target. At the same time, simply closing the eyes can affect the cortical representation of a tactile stimulus. Using a novel active tactile search task, we explored the effect of closing the eyes in a completely dark room. Matching of mechanical nuts and bolts was both faster and more efficient when the eyes were closed compared to when they were open, despite equal amounts of visual information. Thus, the simple act of closing the eyes can modulate behavioural performance, and presumably the underlying neural processing. In a second experiment, observers were deprived on visual input for 90 minutes by blindfolding. Performance on the active search task was improved for the deprived group, but not for the non-deprived group.