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Early language development and severe visual impairment
Author(s) -
McCONACHIE HELEN
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.1990.tb00638.x
Subject(s) - visual impairment , psychology , cognitive science , computer science , cognitive psychology , neuroscience
Summary Some blind children show an early facility with expressive language in advance of their true level of comprehension; children who have severely impaired vision, but use visually‐directed reaching, do not. Inspection of developmental assessments of 40 blind and very severely visually impaired children with no other disability, seen at the Wolfson Centre, London, confirmed these patterns. However, a considerable number of blind children showed a lag in expressive speech relative to comprehension, which might mean first words appearing as late as 2 years of age. Later assessments of this group of children showed mixed outcomes. Further prospective research is indicated as a basis for counselling parents.