[Nfbf-l] Children of Blind Mothers Learn New Modes of Communication

[Alan Dicey]

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 |
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.
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."