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

Fri Apr 12 01:27:47 UTC 2013

This was very interesting.  I have very little vision, and have three 
children who are all sighted.  They all grew up just fine.  They even learn 
at a very young age to move their head to accommodate the spoon when I was 
feeding them if I was a little to the left or right.  It was really cool.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Dicey" <adicey at bellsouth.net>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 8:25 PM
Subject: [Nfbf-l] Children of Blind Mothers Learn New Modes of Communication

> 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."
>
>
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