BLINDNESS

A major issue is whether visual impairment has an impact on language acquisition. Does it lead to delays in acquisition given that the child’s route to meaning is not supported by adult facial expressions, by gesture or by the ability to map words on to visible real-world objects? Does it lead to imbalances in the vocabulary that is acquired? Chomsky cited blind children as evidence that language is innate, claiming that their pattern of language development does not differ from that of a sighted child. However, research has indicated that the situation is more complex than Chomsky suggested.

At a pre-linguistic stage, adults appear to find it more difficult to engage blind children in communicative activities, because they lack conversational cues provided by the direction of the infant’s gaze. The infant responds less– suggesting that it needs to focus heavily upon listening at this stage. Nevertheless, the onset of babbling appears to take place at about the same time as with sighted infants.

Blind infants appear to acquire a phonological system a little more slowly than is normal. They sometimes confuse phonemes which are similar in manner of articulation but visually distinct: for example, substituting /n/ for /m/. This difficulty appears to influence their early choice of words.

The first words emerge at about the same time as with sighted infants. However, there may be differences in the content of the early vocabulary. It has been suggested that the first 50 words of a blind child are likely to include fewer common nouns; and that they are more likely to be used referentially for a single object instead of generalised to a whole class of objects. Blind children generally engage less in sorting activities; this suggests that blindness may limit the capacity to form categories, with consequences for vocabulary acquisition.

 At an early stage, blind children are more likely than others to engage in echolalia, the meaningless repetition of words and chunks of language. However, their later speech is not (as was once suggested) marked by verbalism, the use of words whose sense they have not grasped. Even verbs of vision appear to have approximate meanings mapped on to them (see ¼ ‘be aware of’).

Overall, visually related terms are used less frequently than happens with sighted children. Lack of sight also seems to affect the acquisition of terms relating to space. The notion of deixis appears to be difficult for blind infants to acquire and there is usually a delay in the acquisition of personal pronouns, demonstratives and some prepositions.

The language that is acquired by an infant may partly reflect the nature of the speech that is directed at it by adult carers; this has been shown to vary somewhat when the infant is visually impaired. Adults tend to use third-person pronouns less and (strangely) spend more time labelling objects and less describing them.

 In summary, the example of the blind infant does not provide the clear cut endorsement for nativism that was once claimed; but nor does it show conclusively that language acquisition is dependent upon input and upon the ability to map word forms on to a visible environment.

See also: Deafness, Special circumstances

 Further reading: Landau and Gleitman (1985); Mills (1993)

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

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The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas