What is vision's role in driving early word production? To answer this, we assessed parent-report vocabulary questionnaires administered to congenitally blind children (N = 40, Mean age = 24 months [R: 7-57 months]) and compared the size and contents of their productive vocabulary to those of a large normative sample of sighted children (N =…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention programme administered to blind and sighted school students. The students were given information concerning style, author and technique of three paintings from three different artistic periods, as well as guidelines to assess the overall aesthetics of each image. This programme was…

In the present study, the aim was to examine the differences in performance between children and adolescents with visual impairment and sighted peers in the water-level task. Twenty-eight individuals with visual impairments, 14 individuals with blindness and 14 individuals with low vision, and 28 sighted individuals participated in the present…

In the typical human visual system, the macula allows for high visual resolution. Damage to this area from diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), causes the loss of central vision in the form of a central scotoma. Since no treatment is available to reverse AMD, providing low vision rehabilitation to compensate for the loss of…

Purpose: The role of vision in speech representation was investigated in congenitally blind speakers and sighted speakers by studying the correlates of contrastive focus, a prosodic condition in which phonemic contrasts are enhanced. It has been reported that the lips (visible articulators) are less involved in implementing the rounding feature…

Previous research has suggested that the use of the fingers may play a functional role in the development of a mature counting system. However, the role of developmental vision in the elaboration of a finger numeral representation remains unexplored. In the current study, 14 congenitally blind children and 14 matched sighted controls undertook…

Our representation of peripersonal space does not always accurately reflect the physical world. An example of this is "pseudoneglect", a phenomenon in which neurologically normal individuals bisect to the left of the veridical midpoint, reflecting an overrepresentation of the left portion of space compared with the right one. Consistent biases…

Purpose: To develop a suitable mobility course for the assessment of mobility performance as part of a user evaluation of Electronic Mobility Aids (EMA) aimed at obstacle detection and orientation. Method: A review of the literature led to a list of critical factors for the assessment of mobility performance of persons who are visually impaired.…

Introduction: In this study, executive function of school-aged children with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) is examined in the context of behavioral problems and communicative competence. Methods: Teachers assessed the executive function of a sample of 226 visually impaired students from mainstream schools and…

The aim of this study is to examine the performance in coding and representing of near-space in relation to vision status (blindness vs. normal vision) and sensory modality (touch vs. vision). Forty-eight children and teenagers participated. Sixteen of the participants were totally blind or had only light perception, 16 were blindfolded sighted…

Previous studies have shown that blind subjects may outperform the sighted on certain tactile discrimination tasks. We recently showed that blind subjects outperformed the sighted in a haptic 2D-angle discrimination task. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of the same blind (n = 16) and sighted (n = 17, G1) subjects in three…

The Ticket to Work (TTW) program is a federally funded program meant to assist persons who receive disability benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA) in obtaining employment, with the ultimate goal of terminating SSA benefits and thereby providing a cost savings for the government. With its focus on employment, the TTW program would…

Using Social Security Administration data, the author evaluated the characteristics of beneficiaries who were blind and visually impaired and who assigned their tickets, the characteristics of beneficiaries who assigned their tickets to employment networks (ENs), and preliminary employment outcomes. The characteristics that predicted assignment of…

This study compared the developmental outcomes of twin boys (one who is blind and one who is sighted) who were born prematurely and diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) at age 24 months. The results indicate a disparity in the developmental outcomes of the twins. Although the medical risk factors that are associated with TTTS…

Analysis of language samples from four children with blindness, four children with low vision, and four sighted children (ages 4-5) revealed that the sighted group had greater complexity of utterances, lower frequency of inappropriate pronoun use, more variation in sentence types, and more instances of experiential narrative and imaginative play.…