Early patterns of interaction between blind infants and their sighted mothers

Abstract

In a longitudinal, descriptive study of blind infant-sighted mother interaction during the age period 3 to 12 months, 10 infants, seven blind and three severely visually impaired, were video-recorded in natural interactional settings with their parents. The objective was to describe which communicative expressions the infants, as well as their mothers use in interaction and how they respond to each others' communications. Detailed analyses of the infants' and mothers' communicative behaviours were carried out. The blind infants exhibited a variety of communicative expressions in interaction with their mothers; they took an active part in proto-conversations and dialogues with their mothers. The blind infants had difficulties in sharing their opinion about objects with their mothers during the age period studied. Comparisons between the blind and the severely visually impaired infants showed that even very low vision improves the infant's opportunities to take part in interpersonal communication and to share meanings. The results are discussed in relation to Trevarthen's view of the infant having an innate motive for intersubjectivity--for communication--and Stern's theory of the development of the self.

Sign language for hard of hearing children — A hindrance or a benefit for their development?

“…PREISLER & M. AHLSTROM their peers and teachers. The children's communicative behaviours were transcribed, i.e., signs, spoken words and sentences, gestures, body movements and facial expressions, as well as those of their peers and teachers, The descriptive categories have been elaborated and used in a number of studies of child-child interaction (Preisler, 1983), blind infant-mother interaction (Preisler, 1991) and deaf infant-mother interaction . On this level of behavioural analysis, interjudgment agreement has been shown to be very high, between 86 and 100 percent (Preisler, 1983), therefore only one of the authors made the first transcriptions.…”

Babies Count: The national registry for children with visual impairments, birth to 3 years

“…Indeed, on average there was a 4.5 month lag from time of diagnosis to referral to early intervention. Once referred, however, there was only about a month between referral and entry into special- Age at referral to a specialized agency in months (n ϭ 2,143) 10.0 (7.4)…”

Attentional processes in young children with congenital visual impairment

“…Serious vision loss puts significant constraints on a young child who is learning that his/her experiences of objects can be shared with others (Bigelow, MacLean, & Proctor, 2004;Bigelow, 2003) and that his/her perspective may differ from that of the parent (Fraiberg, 1977). In turn, this leads to a differential parent-child interaction style, where the child's attention cannot be caught and directed by eye-contact, and the child's own opportunities for following the parent's focus of attention are seriously limited (Andersen, Dunlea, & Kekelis, 1993;Preisler, 1991). Thus, conversational interactions between young children with VI and their mothers have been described as asymmetrical; whilst mothers tend to initiate a greater proportion of almost exclusively child-centred topics than do their children with VI, these children -when compared to sighted children -rarely initiate conversations, are unable to sustain conversation around a particular topic, or may be focussed on a topic that is different from that of the mother (Kekelis & Prinz, 1996;Moore & McConachie, 1994;Andersen et al, 1993;Dunlea, 1989;Kekelis & Andersen, 1984;Mills, 1983;Urwin, 1978).…”