Early language development and severe visual impairment

Some blind children show an early facility with expressive language in advance of their true level of comprehension; children who have severely impaired vision, but use visually-directed reaching, do not. Inspection of developmental assessments of 40 blind and very severely visually impaired children with no other disability, seen at the Wolfson Centre, London, confirmed these patterns. However, a considerable number of blind children showed a lag in expressive speech relative to comprehension, which might mean first words appearing as late as 2 years of age. Later assessments of this group of children showed mixed outcomes. Further prospective research is indicated as a basis for counselling parents.