The Effects of Visual Impairment on Language Development

Imitation Troubles

• When children first begin to acquire language, they do so by imitating others. To do this, they commonly look at the faces of individuals engaging in speech. Visually impaired children cannot look upon the faces of others to see how a sound might be produced, but instead must rely solely upon their abilities to hear the sounds in question and determine independently how that sound would be produced. This makes the task of imitating significantly more difficult.

First Word Delay

• While not all studies agree that visually impaired children take longer to say their first word, some indicate that visually impaired infants may lag as much as eight to 12 months behind their peers in word creation, reports CNIB, a Canadian vision loss information system. This lag, when present, is likely the result of the fact that these children cannot see how sounds are produced and must figure out sound production independently.

Slower Understanding of Meaning

• Because visually impaired children cannot see objects, they struggle to comprehend what many object names signify. This often means that visually impaired children say words without realizing that the word they are uttering is representative of a tangible thing.

Confused Personal Pronoun Use

• Visually impaired children are slow to develop their abilities to use personal pronouns, such as "I." The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired reports that this difficulty with personal pronoun use arises from the fact that visually impaired students often struggle to develop a sense of self. Because these students cannot see themselves as sighted students can, it is more difficult for them to comprehend the fact that they are distinct beings, separate and different from those around them. As these students struggle to develop their personal pronoun use, they will commonly refer to themselves in the third person, using pronouns such as "you" and "she."

Vocabulary Development Struggle

• Blind students cannot acquire vocabulary as quickly as sighted children because of their inability to see objects or images. Sighted students commonly learn words by observing objects around them and then connecting those objects with a representative term. Because blind students cannot see these objects, they can not acquire vocabulary in this same manner.