Lexical Relationships in Children who are Blind

• Published in: Journal of visual impairment & blindness Vol. 93; no. 7; pp. 419 - 421
• Main Authors: Elbers, Loekie, van Loon-Vervoorn, Anita
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.1999; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Associative Processes; Language Acquisition; Vision Disorders; Word Meaning
• ISSN: 0145-482X; 1559-1476
• DOI: 10.1177/0145482X9909300705

Lexical association differences between blind & sighted children were studied. Early word meaning acquisition has a strong visual component for sighted children, & blind children learn more words via verbal explanation. In free-word association, adults' responses tend to be more coordinate & verbally based; blind children were hypothesized to demonstrate more adultlike responses than their sighted counterparts. Dutch blind & sighted subjects ([Ss] N = 10 each, aged 10-13) participated in a free-word association exercise of 24 words repeated four times, where Ss were not allowed to produce the same response twice. The two groups demonstrated similar adult-common response patterns & similar numbers of coordinate responses, but the blind Ss gave more coordinate responses than the sighted Ss did in the early trials. Blind children seem to acquire earlier adultlike access to coordinate relations. 1 Figure, 2 References. E. Taylor