It all seems so obvious: as a child, you see different people, objects or events and you learn to describe them with words. “It's different when you are blind or have a severe visual impairment,” says professor of Pedagogy Mathijs Vervloed. “Some objects or phenomena are so large or distant that they cannot be perceived by hearing or touch. Like the sun and the moon, but also wild animals like lions, birds and giraffes. You can't touch them. In sighted children, you can activate their imagination by showing them pictures of these objects, phenomena or animals. However, this does not work for young blind or severely visually impaired children. For them, giving meaning to these words and then correctly applying them is therefore more complicated.”
Deep word knowledge
Research shows that the word knowledge of children with visual impairment is as broad as in sighted children, but not as deep. “The breadth of word knowledge is about how many words you know, while depth shows the ability to describe a situation using different words,” says Judith Stoep, senior researcher at the Dutch Centre for Language Education and co-author of this booklet. “Children learn a word and then the different features associated with it. Take the word ball: children gradually learn that a ball is smooth, that you can bounce it and that it’s used in sports. As they get older, children link more and more new words to that word: this is how they build a deeper word knowledge. Blind or severely visually impaired children are less likely to make those links because they lack the visual channel to do so.”
According to Vervloed, the lack of deep word knowledge can sometimes cause problems for children who are blind or visually impaired. “For example, a blind boy touched a tree and assumed that, like a houseplant, it would be in a pot. He wasn’t aware of how big a tree is. Another example is a blind person who heard a bird singing and assumed it must be a huge animal because it made such a loud noise.” Stoep adds: “Such misunderstandings also regularly arise with compound words, like the Dutch word for roof tile, ‘dakpan’. Normally, you would see a dakpan and know what it is. But blind and severely visually impaired children may be more likely to associate this word with a pan you use for cooking.”
More detailed description
To avoid such misunderstandings, Vervloed advises parents to describe words in even more detail and offer children as many real life experiences as possible, so that they can learn words in context. “A sighted person usually forgets to explain how an object feels. Is it hard, soft or smooth when you hold it in your hands? What is the texture, is it malleable? And what emotion does it evoke? For example, a glass of milk is not just tall and round, but also hard and cold. And a hedgehog is prickly, which makes touching it more exciting. Naming those elements is important to enable the children to give deeper meaning to certain words.”
The same applies to colours, says Vervloed. “In the past, it was sometimes argued that there was no added value in explaining colours to the blind and severely visually impaired. But colours appear in many expressions and evoke a feeling. We therefore do encourage learning them. You can do this by describing that red, for example, is the stop signal and that green represents the colour of grass and the fresh start of spring. In the booklet, we give practical tips for giving such connotations to colours.”
Besides focusing on word knowledge, the booklet provides tools to facilitate interaction with young children who are blind or have severe visual impairments. Vervloed and Stoep hope that the booklet will be very useful to parents. “The aim is to help parents so that their children get a better grip on words,” Vervloed explains. “And to show them how they can support their children's language development in everyday life.” To finish with a pun: “We hope our tips will be an eye-opener.”
Want to experience what it's like to see nothing?
Then visit the muZIEum. In this museum, you can experience what it's like to see nothing during various guided expeditions. The museum also houses a Donders Citylab, where you can play games and contribute to research conducted by the Donders Institute at Radboud University.
Photo: Sai De Silva via Unsplash