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So although blindness is the least prevalent of all disabilities, at least in children, people dread it. It is reportedly the third most feared condition; only cancer and AIDS outrank it. With a bit of reflection, however, it becomes obvious that our anxieties about blindness are irrational. Most of our apprehension can be attributed to our lack of experience in interacting with individuals with visual impairment. It is not until we talk to people who are blind or read about their appreciation of sounds, smells, and touch that we begin to realize that sight is not the only sense that enables us to enjoy beauty or interact socially with other people.

Like anyone with a disability, the person who is blind wants to be treated like everyone else. Most people who are blind do not seek pity or unnecessary help.

Most authorities believe that lack of vision does not have a very significant effect on the ability to understand and use language. They point to the many studies showing that students who are visually impaired do not differ from sighted students on verbal intelligence tests. Because auditory more than visual perception is the sensory modality through which we learn language, it is not surprising that studies have found that people who are blind are not impaired in language functioning. The child who is blind is still able to hear language and might even be more motivated than the sighted child to use language because it is the main channel through which he or she communicates with others.

There are, however, a few subtle differences in the way in which language usually develops in children, especially infants, who are visually impaired. There appears to be a delay in the very earliest stages of language for some infants with visual impairment; their first words tend to come later. Once they start producing words, however, their vocabulary expands rapidly.

At one time, it was popular for researchers to compare the intelligence of sighted people with that of persons with blindness. Most authorities now believe that such comparisons are virtually impossible because finding comparable tests is so difficult. From what is known, there is no reason to believe that blindness results in lower intelligence.

It is also very difficult to assess the performance of children with visual impairment on laboratory-type tasks of conceptual ability. Many researchers, using conceptual tasks originally developed by noted psychologist Jean Piaget, have concluded that infants and very young children who are blind lag behind their sighted peers, This is usually attributed to the fact that they rely more on touch to arrive at conceptualizations of many objects, and touch is less efficient than sight. However, these early delays do not last for long, especially once the children begin to use language to gather information about their environment. Touch, however, remains a very critical sense throughout life for those who are blind. As one person who is blind described it, he " sees with his fingers".

An important difference between individuals with and without sight is that the latter need to take much more initiative to learn what they can from their environment. Sighted infants and children can pick up a lot of visual information incidentally. In a sense, the world comes to them, whereas children who are visually impaired need to extend themselves out to the world to pick up some of the same information. Exploring the environment motorically, however, does not come easily for infants and young children with visual impairment, especially those who are blind. Many have serious delays in motor skills, such as sitting up, crawling, and walking (Celeste, 2002). Therefore, adults should do as much as possible to encourage infants and young children who are blind to explore their environment.

In addition to fostering a sense of exploration in children who are visually impaired, it is critical that teachers and parents provide intensive and extensive instruction, including repetition, in order to help them develop their conceptual abilities:

When a student cannot see, it takes time to comprehend and identify the front and back of a car, inside and out, including the front and back doors. It can be mystifying to comprehend what the front and back of a store are when the student is inside of it. It is especially difficult if the student is thinking of the front and back of his or her own body that, as the student moves, are continually changing relationship to objects and their fronts and backs.... A gradual approach to teaching concepts, presenting many repetitions over time and in a variety of situations, with repeated opportunities for tactile exploration, will yield the most detailed mental image and the most thorough understanding.

Orientation and mobility skills are very important for the successful adjustment of people with visual impairment. Orientation and mobility (О & M) skills refer to the ability to have a sense of where one is in relation to other people, objects, and landmarks (orientation) and to move through the environment (mobility). О & t M skills depend to a great extent on spatial ability, The spatial abilities of people who are blind continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence; full development does not occur until well into the teenage years.

Authorities have identified two ways in which persons with visual impairment process spatial information: as a sequential route or as a map depicting the general relation of various points in the environment. The latter method, referred to as cognitive mapping, is preferable because it offers more flexibility in navigating. Consider three sequential points—A, B, and C. A sequential mode of processing spatial information restricts a person's movement so that the person can move from A to С only by way of B. But a person with a cognitive map of points A, B, and С can go from A to С directly without going through B. Although not impossible, it is more difficult for people who are blind to build these cognitive maps. Vision allows us to

construct a coherent sense of the physical environment and our place in it, without struggling to remember. On entering an unfamiliar classroom, a sighted child is able to take in something of the whole at a glance, and perhaps work out the overall position of the room in relation to more familiar places, such as the library, computer room..,. For the child with a visual impairment, constructing an inner map of this new classroom presents a problem of synthesizing information from the integration of small, local details to achieve a functional sense of the whole, which must then be largely memorized.

Mobility skills vary greatly among people with visual impairment. It is surprisingly difficult to predict which individuals will be the best travelers. For example, common sense seems to tell us that mobility would be better among those who have more residual vision and those who lose their vision later in life, but this is not always the case. How much motivation and how much proper instruction one receives are critical to becoming a proficient traveler.

Some persons who are blind have the ability to detect physical obstructions in the environment. Walking along the street, they often seem able to sense an object in their path. This ability has come to be known as the obstacle sense—an unfortunate term in some ways, because many laypeople have taken it to mean that people who are blind somehow develop an extra sense. It is easy to see why this misconception exists. Even people who are blind have a very difficult time explaining the phenomenon

A number of experiments have shown that with experience, people who are blind come to learn to detect subtle changes in the pitches of high-frequency echoes as they move coward objects. Actually, they are taking advantage of the Doppler effect, a physical principle that says the pitch of a sound rises as a person moves toward its source.

Although obstacle sense can be important for the mobility of someone without sight, by itself it will not make its user a highly proficient traveler. It is merely an aid. Extraneous noises (e.g., traffic, speech, rain, wind) can render obstacle sense unusable. Also, it requires walking at a fairly slow speed to be able to react in time.

Along with the myth that people with blindness have an extra sense comes the general misconception that they automatically develop better acuity in their other senses. However, people who are blind do not have lowered thresholds of sensation in touch or hearing. What they are able to do is make better use of the sensations they obtain. Through concentration and attention, they learn to make very fine discriminations.

Another common belief is that people who are blind automatically have superior musical talent. Some do embark on musical careers, but this is because music is an area in which they can achieve success.

Most professionals agree chat direct comparisons of the academic achievement of students who are blind with that of sighted students must be interpreted cautiously because the two groups must be tested under different conditions. There are, however, braille and large-print forms of some achievement tests. The few studies mat have been done suggest that both children with low vision and those who are blind are sometimes behind their sighted peers. Most authorities believe that when low achievement does occur, it is due not to the blindness itself, but to such things as low expectations or lack of exposure to braille.

With respect to reading, we do know that learning to read braille is similar in some important ways to learning to read print. For example, phonological awareness is an important component of learning to read print or braille.

At one time the prevailing opinion of professionals was that people with visual impairment were at risk to exhibit personality disturbances. Authorities now agree that personality problems are not an inherent condition of blindness. The social difficulties that arise are usually due to society's inappropriate reaction to blindness.

Much of this inappropriateness might be because most of us do not have many acquaintances who are blind. Social interactions are often based on subtle cues, such as facial expressions. Research suggests that some who are blind have facial expressions that differ in subtle ways from those who are sighted. For example, they are less able to hide their true feelings, especially when negative ones. Another good example is smiling. Smiling is a strong visual cue that sighted people use to provide feedback to one another. For some people with visual impairment, however, smiling is not as spontaneous a social response as it is for those who are sighted.

Unfortunately, some people who are blind feel that they need to go to great lengths to appear " normal."

An important point is that it should not be only up to people who are visually impaired.to change their ways of interacting socially. Sighted people should also be responsible for instances of faulty communication with people who are blind. Not only might some people with visual impairment profit from instruction in using appropriate visually based cues (e.g., facial expressions, head nods, and gestures), but sighted people also can learn to use their natural telephone skills when communicating with people who are blind. Two sighted people talking on the telephone use a variety of auditory cues to help them communicate, even though they cannot see each other (e.g., responding with " uh-hum" or " yeah, " asking for more information, adjusting tone of voice). If sighted individuals consciously try to use these strategies when interacting with people who are blind, communication may be smoother.

A misconception about people who are blind is that they do not adjust well socially.

An impediment to good social adjustment for some students with visual impairment is stereotypic behaviors: repetitive, stereotyped movements such as body rocking, poking or rubbing the eyes, repetitive hand or finger movements, and grimacing. These can begin as early as a few months of age. For many years, the term blindisms was used to refer to these behaviors because it was thought that they were manifested only in people who are blind; however, they are also sometimes characteristic of children with normal sight who are severely mentally retarded or disturbed.

Several competing theories concern the causes of stereotypic behaviors. For example, some researchers believe that they are an attempt to provide oneself with more stimulation to make up for a relative lack of sensory or social stimulation. Others believe them to be an attempt to self-regulate one's stimulation in the face of overstimulation. In either case, most authorities believe that these behaviors serve to stabilize the person's arousal level.

There is even some disagreement about how much one should intervene to reduce or eliminate stereotypic behaviors. On the one hand, when done to the extreme, these behaviors can interfere with learning and socialization, and can even be physically injurious. On the other hand, if not done to the extreme, such behaviors might help maintain an appropriate level of arousal. In addition, some have argued for society's need to be more tolerant of stereotypic behaviors: " As researchers and advocates, let us consider the idea that rocking is simply an idiosyncrasy or individual difference that should be ignored or for which we should demand greater awareness, tolerance, and understanding".

 

III. 1. Answer the questions:

1) What eye disorders can lead to visual impairments?

2) What is obstacle sense?

3) What are the early signs and symptoms of vision problems?

4) What are some psychological and behavioral characteristics of learners with visual impairments?

5) What causes stereotypic behaviors?

6) What are the benefits of a guide dog for a blind and vision impaired person?

2. Make the plan of the text. Here are the titles in the wrong order. Make the order correct:

1) Stereotypic behaviors

2) Social adjustment

3) Orientation and mobility

4) Academic achievement

5) Intellectual ability

6) Language development

7) Performance on Standardized Intelligence Tests

 

3. Say whether the following statements are true or false:

1) Visual impairment is the consequence of a functional loss of vision, rather than the eye disorder itself.

2) Children with visual impairments, blindness, or deaf-blindness have unique educational needs.

3) Braille is often the best way for children who are blind or who have very limited vision to develop skills in literacy and numeracy.

4) Guide dogs provide companionship and can have a therapeutic impact helping to improve the quality of life for the child and his/her family.

5) Blindisms are stereotyped behaviors sometimes found in visually impaired toddlers or children. Blindism behaviors range from body rocking, head swaying, eye rubbing, head banging, spinning to finger flicking. These behaviors are repetitive and serve no specific goals, but can calm or soothe the child if they are distressed.

6) Blindness is the third most feared condition; only cancer and AIDS outrank it.

 

4. Find the synonymous words in the text:

- opinion;

- to fear;

- to investigate;

- remaining;

- to reckon on;

- to bring up;

- poignancy;

- impellent;

- peculiarity.