This empirical study compared the average ages at which four children with congenital blindness acquired 32 fine motor skills with age norms for sighted children. The results indicated that the children experienced extreme developmental delays in the acquisition of manual skills and a high degree of variability in developmental delays within and across six categories of fine-motor skills.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BayleyN. (1969). Manual for the Bayley Scales of Infant Development.New York: Psychological Corporation.
2.
BigelowA. (1983). The development of the use of sound in the search behaviour of infants. Developmental Psychology, 19, 317–321.
3.
BigelowA. (1986). The development of reaching in blind children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 355–366.
4.
BrambringM. (1993). “Lessons” with a child who is blind: Development and early intervention in the first years of life.Okemos, MI: Blind Children's Fund.
5.
BrambringM. (1996). Early intervention with blind children: Main findings of the Bielefeld longitudinal study. In BrambringM., RauhH., & BeelmannA. (Eds.), Early childhood intervention: Theory, evaluation, and practice (pp. 419–435). New York: de Gruyter.
6.
BrambringM. (2003). Sprachentwicklung blinder kinder [Language development in blind children]. In RickheitG., HerrmannT., & DeutschW. (Eds.), Psycholinguistik: Ein internationales handbuch (pp. 730–752). Berlin: de Gruyter.
7.
BrambringM. (2005). Divergente entwicklung blinder und sehender kinder in vier entwicklungsbereichen [Divergent development of blind versus sighted children in four developmental domains]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 37(4), 173–183.
8.
BrambringM. (2006a). Divergent development of gross motor skills in children who are blind or sighted. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 100, 620–634.
9.
BrambringM. (2006b). Early intervention with infants and preschoolers who are blind. Bielefeld Observation Scales (BOS-BLIND). Two volumes: Manual and scales.Würzburg, Germany: Edition Bentheim.
10.
BrandtI. (1983). Griffiths-Entwicklungsskalen (GES) [German version of Griffiths Developmental Scales]. Weinheim: Beltz. (Original work published 1954)
11.
FerrellK. A. (2000). Growth and development of young children. In HolbrookM. C., & KoenigA. J. (Eds.), Foundations of education, Volume I: History and theory of teaching children and youths with visual impairments (2nd ed., pp. 111–134). New York: AFB Press.
12.
FlehmigI., SchloonM., UhdeJ., & von BernuthH. (1973). Denver-Entwicklungsskalen. Testanweisung [Test manual for the German Denver Developmental Screening Test]. Hamburg, Germany: Hamburger Spastikerverein.
13.
FraibergS. (1968). Parallel and divergent patterns in blind and sighted infants. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 23, 264–300.
14.
FraibergS. (1977). Insights from the blind: Comparative studies of blind and sighted infants.New York: New American Library.
15.
FraibergS., SiegelB. L., & GibsonR. (1966). The role of sound in the search behavior of a blind infant. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 21, 327–357.
16.
GibsonE. J. (2002). Perceiving the affordances: A portrait of two psychologists.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
17.
HattonD. D., BaileyD. B., BurchinalM. R., & FerrellK. A. (1997). Development growth curves of preschool children with vision impairments. Child Development, 68, 788–806.
18.
JanJ. E., FreemanR. D., & ScottE. P. (1977). Visual impairment in children and adolescents.New York: Grune & Stratton.
19.
LeonhartR. (2004). Effektgrößenberechnung bei interventionsstudien [Computing effect sizes in intervention studies]. Rehabilitation, 43, 241–246.
NorrisM., SpauldingP. J., & BrodieF. H. (1957). Blindness in children (Vol. 37). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
22.
Pérez-PereiraM., & Conti-RamsdenG. (1999). Language development and social interaction in blind children.Hove, England: Psychology Press/Taylor and Francis.
23.
RogowS. M. (1987). The ways of the hand: A study of hand function among blind, visually impaired and visually impaired multi-handicapped children and adolescents. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 5(2), 59–61.
24.
RossS., & TobinM. J. (1997). Object permanence, reaching, and locomotion in infants who are blind. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 91, 25–32.
25.
SanneM., & BrambringM. (2001). Erfassung der selbständigkeit blinder klein und vorschulkinder [Assessing daily living activities in blind infants and preschoolers]. Zeitschrift für Differentielle und Diagnostische Psychologie, 22(1), 56–69.
26.
TewesU. (1983). HAWIK-R: Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenztest für Kinder–Revision [German Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Revised]. Bern, Switzerland: Huber.
27.
TrösterH., & BrambringM. (1993). Early motor development in blind infants. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 14, 83–106.
28.
WarrenD. H. (1984). Blindness and early childhood development (2nd ed.). New York: American Foundation for the Blind.
29.
WarrenD. H. (1994). Blindness and children: An individual differences approach.New York: Cambridge University Press.
30.
WebsterA., & RoeJ. (1998). Children with visual impairments: Social interaction, language and learning.London: Routledge.
31.
ZwienerK., & Schmidt-KolmerE. (1982). Arbeitsanleitung zur periodischen kontrolle von leistung und verhalten bei kindern von 0; 1–3; 6 jahren für die krippenerzieherinnen [Instruction for crib educators on the periodic control of achievement and behavior in children of 0; 1–3; 6 years]. In Schmidt-KolmerE. (Ed.), Entwicklungskontrolle in der frühen kindheit in ihrer bedeutung für die gesundheitliche betreuung und erziehung: Hygiene in kinderkollektiven.Berlin: Volk und Gesundheit (Vol. 7, pp. 13–89).