Congenital visual impairment

Rebecca Greenaway

Naomi J. Dale

pp. 441-469

in: Louise Cummings (ed), Research in clinical pragmatics, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

Language is assumed to have particular importance for the child with visual impairment (VI), serving a facilitative role in developing understanding. Children and young people with VI often demonstrate very good structural language ability but have greater difficulty in pragmatic language, which involves the flexible use of language within the social context. Differences in early social responsivity, communication and language skills between children with VI and their sighted peers are evident from infancy, and subsequently the developmental trajectory to fluent language appears to differ in children with VI. In developing pragmatic language and social communicative skills, the importance of conceptualisation of the environment, play, parent-child interaction, shared attention and theory of mind has been highlighted. These areas of research are discussed and it is argued that there is a broad impact of VI on development. There is controversy over the degree to which pragmatic language difficulties in children with VI can be explained by the child's limited visual input rather than by a true pragmatic difficulty per se. We argue that there is individual variability, with some children appearing to overcome the challenges of developing social communication and pragmatic language in the absence of visual input, but with a significant proportion showing greater difficulty.