[Blindtlk] eye contact not so important for babies with blindmothers

Sun Apr 14 19:34:14 UTC 2013

This is interesting, especially considering the oft-quoted statistic about
blind children only starting to understand what blindness is and that not
all people have it until they are 4 or 5 years old. Very fascinating.

Chris

Chris Nusbaum, Co-Chair
Public Relations Committee
Maryland Association of Blind Students
Phone: (443) 547-2409

-----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jewel
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 3:29 PM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] eye contact not so important for babies with
blindmothers

Truly fascinating. The part I found most interesting is that the babies
learned at such a young age that not everyone is the same. That takes a lot
of reasoning and judgement. A lot like bilingualism, indeed.

On 4/12/13, peggy <pshald at neb.rr.com> wrote:
> Glad to read this, I wasn't too concerned with my last two kids but 
> with my
>
> first one everyone kept telling me ... you have no eye contact with 
> her or babies love eye contact or she'll develop slower because 
> there's no eye contact ... Even when I'd hold other people's babies 
> that didn't like me people would say ... that's because you have no 
> eye contact.  But my daughter, my first, turned out okay, so I didn't 
> worry about it as much with
>
> my last two boys.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sherri
> Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 6:40 PM
> To: our-safe-haven at googlegroups.com ; NFB of Florida parents ; 
> blindtlk at nfbnet.org
> Subject: [Blindtlk] eye contact not so important for babies with 
> blindmothers
>
> This is a very fascinating article. I always wondered, because so much 
> emphasis is put on eye contact.
>
> Children of Blind Mothers Learn New Modes of Communication by 
> Elizabeth Norton on 10 April 2013, 11:45 AM |
>
> Back at you. Babies of blind mothers can still read the faces of the 
> sighted.
> Credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
> A loving gaze helps firm up the bond between parent and child, 
> building social skills that last a lifetime. But what happens when mom 
> is blind? A new study shows that the children of sightless mothers 
> develop healthy communication skills and can even outstrip the 
> children of parents with normal vision.
>
> Eye contact is one of the most important aspects of communication, 
> according to Atsushi Senju, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist 
> at Birkbeck, University of London. Autistic people don't naturally 
> make eye contact, however, and they can become anxious when urged to 
> do so. Children for whom face-to-face contact is drastically 
> reduced-babies severely neglected in orphanages or children who are 
> born blind-are more likely to have traits of autism, such as the 
> inability to form attachments, hyperactivity, and cognitive 
> impairment.
>
> To determine whether eye contact is essential for developing normal 
> communication skills, Senju and colleagues chose a less extreme example:
> babies whose primary caregivers (their mothers) were blind. These 
> children had other forms of loving interaction, such as touching and 
> talking. But the mothers were unable to follow the babies' gaze or 
> teach the babies to follow theirs, which normally helps children learn 
> the importance of the eyes in communication.
>
> Apparently, the children don't need the help. Senju and colleagues 
> studied five babies born to blind mothers, checking the children's 
> proficiency at 6 to 10 months, 12 to 15 months, and 24 to 47 months on 
> several measures of age-appropriate communications skills. At the 
> first two visits, babies watched videos in which a woman shifted her 
> gaze or moved different parts of her face while corresponding changes 
> in the baby's face were recorded.
> Babies also followed the gaze of a woman sitting at a table and 
> looking at various objects.
>
>
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>
> The babies also played with unfamiliar adults in a test that checked 
> for autistic traits, such as the inability to maintain eye contact, 
> not smiling in response to the adult's smile, and being unable to 
> switch attention from one toy to a new one. At each age, the 
> researchers assessed the children's visual, motor, and language skills.
>
> When the results were compared to scores of children of "sighted" 
> parents, the five children of blind mothers did just as well on the 
> tests, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society B.
> Learning
> to communicate with their blind mothers also seemed to give the babies 
> some advantages. For example, even at the youngest age tested, the 
> babies directed fewer gazes toward their mothers than to adults with 
> normal vision, suggesting that they were already learning that 
> strangers would communicate differently than would their mothers. When 
> they were between 12 and 15 months old, the babies of blind mothers 
> were also more verbal than were other children of the same age. And 
> the youngest babies of blind mothers outscored their peers in 
> developmental tests-especially visual tasks such as remembering the 
> location of a hidden toy or switching their attention from one toy to 
> a new one presented by the experimenter.
>
> Senju likens their skills to those of children who grow up bilingual; 
> the need to shift between modes of communication may boost the 
> development of their social skills, he says. "Our results suggest that 
> the babies aren't passively copying the expressions of adults, but 
> that they are actively learning and changing the way to best communicate
with others."
>
> "The use of sighted babies of blind mothers is a clever and important 
> idea,"
> says developmental scientist Andrew Meltzoff of the University of 
> Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences in Seattle. 
> "The mother's blindness may teach a child at an early age that certain 
> people turn to look at things and others don't. Apparently these 
> little babies can learn that not everyone reacts the same way."
>
> Meltzoff adds that there are many ways to pay attention to a child.
> "Doubtless, the blind mothers use touch, sounds, tugs on the arm, and 
> tender pats on the back. Our babies want communication, love, and 
> attention. The fact that these can come through any route is a 
> remarkable demonstration of the adaptability of the human child."
>
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