Relationship between the Development of Language and Thought in Young Blind Children

Abstract

The relationship between the development of object permanence and early words was studied in three young boys, two totally blind from birth and one severely visually impaired. Auditory and tactile tasks analogous to traditional visual object-permanence tasks were presented to the children at monthly intervals, and their first 50 words and the context in which the words were said were recorded by their mothers and collected monthly. All three boys acquired early words within the age range for sighted children, but their usage of the words was different. The two blind boys but not the visually impaired boy were delayed in their development of object permanence. The relationship between the acquisition of early words and the development of object permanence suggests that the emergence of language is not dependent on a stable understanding of the existence and permanence of objects.