Transcript Common Characteristics of Children with VI

Common Characteristics
of Children with VI
Myths about People who are
Blind
 They
need help in order to survive.
 They should be pitied.
 They have very little potential for
being successful economically.
 It is dangerous for them to move
through space by themselves.
 They need protection, and their dog
guide would take care of any
problem that arose.
Myths and Facts
 People
who are blind have a sixth
sense.
 People who are blind only see
blackness or grayness.
 People who are blind do not dream.
 People who are blind need to be
spoken for.
 People
who are blind are easily able
to recognize who a person is just by
hearing the person’s voice.
People who are blind have better than
average musical abilities.
People who are blind should not travel
alone unless they have dog guides.
 People
who are blind are sad,
depressed, and angry.
 When speaking with people who are
visually impaired, never use such
terms as see or look.
 When you talk to a person who is
severely visually impaired, you must
speak loudly.
 People who are blind cannot hold self
supporting jobs and are on welfare.
Lowenfeld (1981)
 Lowenfeld
identified three critical
ways in which blindness effects the
characteristics of the person:
– The range and variety of experience.
– The ability to move about.
– In control of the environment and the
person’s relationship to it.
Adventitious vs. Congenital Visual
Impairment
 Congenital
– visually impaired since
birth
 Adventitious – visual impairment
occurs after birth; the later the
impairment –
– The greater the visual mapping and
visual memory.
– The greater the emotional impact.
Differences between students who
are sighted and students who are
Visually Impaired
 Babies
who are blind are very slow to
develop the coordinated motor skills
which are needed.
 If the student has low vision,
adaptations in contrast, color,
complexity, size, style, proximity,
lighting, and time may be beneficial.
 Children
with visual impairments are
likely to be late to walk.
 They are also likely to be late to talk.
 They may be echolalic.
 Tactual defensiveness is very
common.
 Repetitive motions (blindisms) are
often observed.
 Resistance to wearing glasses or
using equipment that would help
them in class is common.
 Sometimes
very poor social skills.
 Problems with grooming are fairly
common.
 Being overly dependent on one or
more adult happens fairly frequently.
 Unwillingness to take risks or
confront challenges.
Cognitive development
 Cause
and effect are harder to
develop
 One to one correspondence is more
difficult because it must be
experienced tactually.
 Relationship between words and
objects or actions may be inaccurate
or difficult to establish.
Cognitive development (cont)
Self-help skills are slow to develop
because children are often given little
opportunity to work with them.
 Social skills are difficult because some of
the subtle nuances of social
communication may be impossible for the
child to perceive.
 If the student is congenitally visually
impaired there may be significant
misunderstanding of basic concepts.

Concepts
 Concept
development helps us all
make sense of a “variability of the
environment” (Warren 1984)
 Most of all, our students typically
have a very distorted perspective on
even the most basic concepts.
 This has a compounding effect since
a child who is visually impaired has
more demand placed on there
conceptual abilities than a child who
is sighted.
Concepts
 Most
of all, our students typically
have a very distorted perspective on
even the most basic concepts.
SO WHAT
 Intervention
works – earlier the
better
 Students may talk a “good game”
but not have a basic concepts
 Areas of need will have to be
assessed and possibly remediated
 Whatever you do for the client (no
matter their age) should be
meaningful to them