The conversational language strategies of six totally blind children were compared to those of a similarly aged group of six sighted children to determine if blindness strongly influences the use of linguistic strategies. The following types of analysis were completed: (1) characterization of utterances according to sentence types and mean length of utterance, (2) motivation of utterances, and (3) management of visual reference in speech. The results suggested that although blind children are generally competent in language, they utilize a number of linguistic strategies that differentiate them from sighted language-users. The implications of these differences in strategy are discussed.
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