Blind Swimmer (Effect of a Touch) - MaxErnst, 1934
The neonate does not have a concept of the self as an entity independent of other people or the physical world. The older child has a well-developed sense of him- or herself, not only as an entity distinct from
other people and things, but as an independent person with a unique set of emotions, desires, fears, abilities, and other personal characteristics.
The development of the sense of self is the topic of this chapter.
The adaptive tasks begin in infancy, when the neonate must acquire the concept of the distinction of the self from the rest of the world.
Subsequently, a concept of body image must be acquired, and the child must be able to represent the self in linguistic usage. The child's realization of the facts and implications of his or her visual impairment are of
particular interest. Gradually, and in large part as a consequence of the process of adapting to the demands of the social world, the child acquires a set of characteristics that are often collectively called "personality." With respect to a
sense of self, not least among these is the notion of locus of control, which has to do with the child's perception of the extent to which his or her
personal situation is primarily under the control of external as opposed to internal factors.
Self-concept in infancy
The general argument is made that initially the infant, with or without vision, does not have a sense of self as distinct from the physical or social
world and thus must acquire the distinction. Ordinarily the development of this concept depends on many sources of information, directly from
the physical environment as well as indirectly from interactions with other people. Since vision is a potentially rich source of such information, the
absence of vision may mean that the concept of self as distinct from the world develops along alternative paths.
Applied to the blind infant, this formulation is expressed in different ways depending on the writer's theoretical orientation. Writers in the
psychoanalytic tradition, for example, use the term "ego development." For the most part this term is not meant in the restrictive sense of a
personality construct, but encompasses aspects of perceptual, cognitive, and motor functioning. Broadly speaking, it has to do with the emotional
and conceptual separation of the self (the "ego") from the rest of the world. Sandier (1963) hypothesized that lack of vision necessarily alters
the course of ego development: "Because of the absence of a major sensory modality, the ego development of the blind child will tend to
proceed along different lines from that of the sighted . . . the ego development of the blind child is hindered or distorted by his sensory
handicap" (p. 344). Further, "Ego deformation resulting from the blindness occurs in its own right, and is linked with a path of development
which basically cannot be reversed by the environment, although its outcome can be modified to a large extent by suitable mothering" (p.346).
Fraiberg and Freedman (1964), while agreeing that the lack of vision changes the situation, were more positive in their view of the potential
outcome: "We must assume from the evidence presented by large numbers of healthy and educable blind children that other sensory modalities
can substitute for vision in the process of ego formation. There remain the questions: how are these substitutions made, and how does ego formation take place in the absence of vision?" (p. 114).
Scott (1969) approached the issue from a more cognitive point of view but was just as pessimistic as Sandier (1963): "The differentiation between self and environment begins to emerge at this point [third to
fourth month]. By differentiating objects from one another, by manipulating them, and by observing his impact upon them, the [sighted] child
is slowly able to distinguish the boundary between self and non-self. This process is greatly frustrated in the blind child" (p. 1030). Scott went on to
delineate specific areas of behavior, such as linguistic usage and social interactions, that he argued are necessarily affected adversely by the lack
of vision. Scott summarized the problems as three: a restriction in the extent of the environment that the infant can engage, a lesser stimulus
value of the part of the environment that is encountered, and a lack of appreciation of the infant's impact on the objects manipulated.
Adapting to the social world
A still more cognitively based formulation is also available. According to Piaget's (1954) account of the course of sensorimotor development in
the sighted infant, for the first four months the child's activity is tied up with actions related to his or her own body and its sensations: it is only
with the substage of secondary circular reactions, beginning around four months of age, that the infant begins to show an effective orientation to
the external world and to the perceptual stimulation it provides. This timing squares well with the four- to five-month normative onset of
reaching outward to visually perceived objects. Without vision to elicit reaching outward, the blind infant might well prolong the prior substage
of primary circular reactions, in which activity is directed to his or her own body.
The problem in trying to make sense of all this is that the available evidence is not good. It may be reasonable to accept on face value the
various observations, for example that around mid-year, infants with visual impairments do not orient as much to the external world as sighted
infants do, but it is a substantial leap to the conclusion that as a consequence of this, concepts about the distinction between the self and the
external world differ between blind and sighted infants. From the evidence that is available, I can see no objective basis for drawing conclusions about the quality of the self-concept of blind infants. Absent direct
evidence, inferences can be drawn as easily in one direction as the other.
The development of self-concept after infancy
The issue of self-concept in children is difficult to conceptualize and to
evaluate. These difficulties arise because the term is used by different
people in very different ways and is, correspondingly, evaluated in very
different ways. "Body image" captures one set of perceptual-cognitive
meanings, referring to the conception of the body and its relationship to
the external world. There is also a cluster of work that interprets language as an indicator of self-concept. Yet another approach regards self-concept as a set of personality variables. We will review each of these in
turn.
Body image
At one level, "body image" refers to a child's knowledge of the parts of
the body and of the relationships among those parts (e.g., the fingers are
connected to the hand). A second level is exemplified by Siegel and
Murphy (1970), who defined body image as the mental picture that one
has of one's body in space. Combining these, Mills (1970) defined body
image as "a knowledge of body parts, how the parts relate to each other,
how the parts may be utilized both individually and collectively for
purposeful activity, and how the parts relate to the child's spatial environment" (p. 81). Various methods have been used to evaluate the child's
body image.
Constructive methods. One approach asks the child to construct the body.
For example, Millar (1973d) assessed blind children's ability to draw the
human body. The children had lost vision within the first two years of life
and ranged in age from 6 to 12 years. They were asked to draw a human
figure using the Sewell Raised Line Drawing Kit, and to name each part
of the figure as they drew it. The drawings were scored for body scheme
(number and recognizability of main body parts), cohesion (correct joining of body parts), detail, and alignment to the floor.
There was a general improvement with age. As in other studies of the
drawings of blind children (e.g., Kennedy, 1980), some of the drawings
were clearly recognizable while others were unidentifiable. The younger
children, if they drew recognizable elements, tended to draw legs, arms,
and the head.
Witkin et al. (1968) used a battery of tests designed to evaluate cognitive articulation in children who were blind from birth and ranged from
12 to 19 years of age. Among the tasks was a clay modeling test intended
to show body concept. The child was asked simply to make a person. The
products were rated on a five-point scale, progressing from unarticulated
lumps to refined human figures without major distortions. Performance
in clay modeling of the human figure was, like most other measures of
cognitive articulation, unrelated to I Q Unfortunately, no relationship of
modeling scores to CA was reported, although it was noted that there
were considerable individual differences in performance.
Great caution must be used in interpreting the results of drawing and
modeling tasks as bearing on the quality of body image. The primary
problem is that failure to draw or sculpt a realistic model may reflect
nothing more than the child's lack of physical skill in dealing with the
medium. To be sure, Millar (1973d) was concerned strictly with the
nature of representation, without reference to an underlying "concept" of body
image. On the other hand, the discussion of Witkin et al. (1968)
implied, inappropriately, that the quality of the child's body concept may
be validly tapped by such constructive techniques.
Though still constructive, the method used by Kephart et al. (1974)
was designed to avoid the difficulty of physical skills. They administered
a verbal test to evaluate blind children's knowledge of the parts of the
body and their relationships. The children were asked to construct an
imaginary boy or girl by describing the various necessary components.
The children ranged from five to seven years of age; the age of visual loss
was not specified. There was a gradual increase with age in the completeness of information offered. Interestingly, although facial features gradually appeared with increasing age, ears and eyes were notably absent, as
were fingers.
Formal scales. Cratty and Sams (1968) designed a detailed test of body
image development of children with visual impairments and reported the
results of the test for a large and diverse group of children in the 5- to
16-year age range. The group was mixed in gender and most had lost
sight at birth. The children varied widely in IQ, with scores ranging
from 57 to 144. The partially sighted subgroup had an average IQ^of 88,
in contrast to the average of 107 for the blind subset. While the difference
was not statistically significant, it signals the need for caution in interpreting any differences between the blind and partially sighted groups.
The test was divided into five parts, body planes (child's identification
of their sides, front, or back), body parts (identification of specific parts of
the child's own body), body movement (performing directed movement of
parts of the entire body), laterality (identification of the body as well as of
the body in relation to external objects), and directionality (identifying
the right and left sides of other people and objects.)
Total test scores generally showed improved performance with increasing age in the 5- to 16-year range. The age differences appeared to
be concentrated in the body parts and the directionality items. There
were no significant gender differences. There was generally better performance by the blind group than the partially sighted group, although this
must be qualified in light of the subsample differences in IQ^noted above.
Children with an IQ^ of 80 or greater tended to perform better than those
with an IQ^ below 80. This difference did not appear for the laterality and
directionality subscales. In any case, the covariation of IQ^ and visual status
in the sample makes a conclusion about either variable risky, as
Cratty and Sams noted.
Some important points about the developmental sequence of the acquisition of body image emerge from the data. Identification of body
planes was performed well by even the youngest children. The body
parts subscale revealed a general developmental progression of knowledge from the upper to the lower body, and a tendency for more extreme
parts (e.g., fingers or hands) to be more readily identified than intermediate parts (e.g., forearm or thigh), particularly when a right-left distinction was involved.
Watemberg, Cernak, and Henderson (1986) assessed the ability of
congenitally blind children in the 7- to 14-year age range to identify left-right relationships, with respect both to the child's own body and to
external relationships. The children's ability to deal with the left-right
relationships of their own body generally improved with age, and it was
usually better than their ability to deal with external right-left spatial
relationships. (Other aspects of laterality are reviewed in Chapter 4.)
Training. Several programs have been designed to improve body image
through training. Cratty and Sams (1968) presented a justification for
such efforts, citing the importance of a strong body image as a conceptual
basis for structuring external space. The proposed program stressed the
importance of several sensory modalities, as well as the need for the child
to build "cognitive bridges" to integrate information from various
sources. Cratty and Sams identified four phases of body image development: (1) body planes, parts, and movements (two to five years), (2) left-right discrimination (five to seven years), (3) complex judgments of the
body and of body-object relationships (six to eight years), and (4) understanding of another person's reference system. A number of exercises
were designed to foster adequate progress through these stages.
The program stressed auditory, motor, tactual, and kinesthetic aspects
as well as verbal mediation. It emphasized experiences appropriate to the
developmental level of the child, and it stressed the necessity of providing a variety of activities to produce adequate generalization of concepts.
Finally, it noted the importance of a gradual externalization of body
image concepts to build an idea of external space using the body image as
a basis.
Based on Cratty's work, Walker (1970, 1971, cited by Walker, 1973) presented a
structured set of lessons in body image training to groups of
kindergarten and early elementary school children. The body image test
of Cratty and Sams (1968) was used for evaluation. The results for the
kindergarten children indicated that "the program was effective in improving the body image" (p. 224). The effects were apparently greater for
children without than with useful vision. These subgroups apparently
differed in intelligence, however, so it is not clear whether more effective
training was related to the severity of visual loss or to variation in intellectual skills.
Summary. Age-related improvement is evident from a variety of methods
of evaluating body image. Although the available evidence is not completely convincing, good body image also appears to be related to partial
vision and to higher intelligence.
Self-concept as expressed in language
Self-concept can also be expressed in language. For the most part, this
literature takes as a starting point the fact that children with visual
impairments often use personal pronouns differently than do sighted
children. We can (albeit with due caution) examine the nature of these
phenomena, particularly the nature of the reference to self in the child's
language, to make inferences about the child's self-concept.
Several reports of the misuse of personal pronouns were discussed in
Chapter 5. For example, Fraiberg and Adelson (1976) discussed the
delayed use of the inventive "I," as well as other misuse of personal
pronouns such as referring to one's self in the third person, in terms of
difficulties with self-representation in the blind child. They also reasoned that such difficulties might emerge in the play situation, in which
objects may be used as symbolic representations of the self.
Rogers and Puchalski (1984b) reported an empirical study directed to
this issue. The procedure involved having the child perform several
"pretend" scenarios involving a breakfast setting, a doll-bathing setting,
and a bedtime setting. After the child's modeling of each setting with
conventional props, one prop was changed to neutral (neither appropriate nor inappropriate to the setting). In a third phase, the prop was
changed to counterconventional (inappropriate). The child's activities
were noted, particularly for evidence of engaging in symbolic "pretend"
actions. About half of the children did so.
There were some interesting differences, and even more interesting
similarities, between the children who showed symbolic activities and
those who did not. There was no relationship between age (range 18 to 37
months) and symbolic activities, nor was there any difference associated
with the child's degree of vision loss (blind vs. partially sighted). Those
who showed symbolic actions tended more than the others to use the
word "no" in their language interactions. On the face of it, the use of
"no" is taken as an assertion of independence, but its use also signifies
that the child conceptualizes him- or herself as separate and independent - the essence of self-representation. The use of the word "no"
can be representational in another way, as denoting the opposite of a
situation; for example, the relationship between "milk" and "no milk" is
a conceptual one. There was also a significant relationship between symbolic actions and the use of two-word combinations in the child's
language.
It is not clear what the causal relationships among these developmental
indices may be, although it is reasonable to suggest that the conceptual
ability to use symbolic representation underlies both the emergence of
relational language forms ("no" or two-word combinations) and the ability to represent the self symbolically in play as well as in other conceptual
ways.
Self-concept as an aspect of personality
Scott's (1968) words (though with gender-appropriate apologies!) provide a useful introduction to this section: "By 'self-concept' I mean an
individual's perception of himself. A man's self-concept consists of the
attitudes, feelings and beliefs he has about the kind of person he is, his
strengths and weaknesses, his potentials and limitations, his characteristic qualities, and so forth. These things are expressed both in his actions
and in his responses to the questions, 'Who am I?', 'What kind of a
person am I?'" (pp. 14-15). We will begin our consideration with research that has addressed self-concept directly, then move to related
personality variables.
Much of the evidence about self-concept comes from studies whose
primary focus has been comparative, but some limited differential information about children with visual impairments can nevertheless be
gleaned.
Jervis (1959) used an interview that probed the child's interests, self-evaluations, and expectations for the future, and a modified Qjsort procedure that was designed to evaluate the discrepancy between the child's
self-perceived characteristics and traits he or she would have liked to
have. The subjects were 20 blind residential school adolescents with
visual loss before the third birthday. As a group, they were generally
apprehensive about the future and expressed limited goals for themselves. Interestingly, in relation to these relatively low self-expectations,
18 of the 20 felt that not enough was expected of them. Asked to mention
their personal strengths, 14 noted their ability to get along with other
people.
Jervis concluded that in comparison with sighted adolescents, these
subjects tended to have either a strongly positive or a strongly negative
attitude about themselves: "It is apparently quite difficult for a blind
person to take a middle ground; either he is forced into having a negative
self-concept or if he is fortunate enough to find positive attributes in his
personality he tends to exaggerate them" (p. 23). Unfortunately, no evidence was presented about which factors might have tended to push an
individual in one or the other direction.
Zunich and Ledwith (1965) also noted the tendency of fourth grade
children to use highly positive or negative traits to describe themselves,
using Lipsitt's (1958) self-concept scale. The girls generally tended to
rate themselves higher on the positive traits than did the boys. Unfortunately no relationships were reported between self-evaluations and factors that might be expected to influence them, such as parental
acceptance.
On the somewhat more positive side, Coker (1979) found elementary
school children in both residential and integrated schools to have a
generally positive self-image, as measured by the Piers-Harris Self Concept Test. Coker was also concerned with the relative academic achievement of the children, evaluated by the Stanford Achievement Test. Interestingly, the achievement of children from both types of school were
equivalent and age-appropriate at the third grade, but while children
from the residential schools maintained their achievement through sixth
grade, the achievement of the integrated school children progressively
declined. The study provided an ideal opportunity to examine the relationship between self-concept and achievement, but unfortunately no
relationship was reported, despite the availability of the data.
The Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TCSC) was used by both Meighan
(1971) and Head (1979) to evaluate the self-concept of adolescents. Both
samples were heterogeneous with respect to ethnicity, gender, and severity of visual loss, as well as age. Neither study found any remarkable
differences in self-concept scores related to these variables, or to school
setting or academic achievement, and the appropriateness of the TCSC
for this population has to be questioned.
Jan et al. (1977) reported the reactions of children to their visual
impairment. According to parental reports, a small number of children
(5%) were "quite preoccupied" by their visual condition, whereas 21%
denied any adverse feelings about their impairment. In contrast to these
relative extremes, 70% of the children were judged to have a "realistic"
attitude toward their visual impairment. That is, they realized that the
impairment imposed some limitations on their activities, but were not
unduly depressed by the recognition. This relatively healthy picture was
mirrored in evaluations by the children's teachers. It was also reflected in
relatively low incidence of autistic symptoms, as evaluated by this
clinically experienced team of researchers. Unfortunately it is not possible to assess any age differences from the data.
Summary. Overall, this body of work is disappointing in its impact.
While several studies have evaluated individual differences, there are few
findings of interest, and we have to wonder about the adequacy of conceptualization and evaluation of self-concept in this research. Furthermore, self-image has not generally been evaluated in relation to areas for
which it might have functional implications, such as school performance
or level of aspiration. Cook-Clampert (1981) noted that the research is
unsatisfying and raised the questions (which are even now still unanswered): "(1) How does the child's visual impairment influence the
family's rearing methods and thus the development of the child's self-concept? (2) Is there a correlation between the extent of visual loss and
the growth of a positive self-concept?" (p. 238).
Realization of blindness. Speaking primarily of partially sighted children,
Winton (1970) stressed the need for informing the child as early as
possible of his or her handicap, so that "he can thus adjust to his
difficulties by making appropriate indications to himself. He can answer
his questions about why he cannot do all the things that other children can do"
(p. 21). In view of the desirability of a stable self-concept, this
advice seems wise: if the child's realization of his or her visual impairment is sudden, an abrupt change in self-concept may result, with negative implications for overall adjustment.
On the other hand, there is reason to avoid overemphasizing the fact of
visual impairment. In their study of blind adults with respect to vocational success, Bauman and Yoder (1966) found that the more self-sufficient and mobile individuals tended to come from families that had
not made an issue of the visual impairment: "The pattern of family
relationships is more likely to be the pattern it would have been had the
individual had normal vision" (p. 69).
Other aspects of personality
Personality tests have a long history, and they have been used no less
avidly to evaluate people with visual impairments than they have with the
sighted population. In my view, the result is disappointing; it is not very
helpful to know that the average child with a visual impairment is more
or less anxious than the average child with vision. It would be important
to know what the functional implications of such a difference are, but the
body of research is remarkably silent on such issues. In brief, the main
themes that appear in this literature are the following.
Introversion /extroversion
In his study of 9- to 14-year-old congenitally blind residential school
children, Zahran (1965) found no gender differences in extroversion
using the Junior Maudsley Personality Inventory. Brown (1938), on the
other hand, evaluated introversion and extroversion in residential school
adolescents and found a slight difference in gender, with boys tending to
be more extroverted than girls. Neither age nor IQ_was significantly
related to introversion/extroversion, and no relationships were reported
with visual experience variables.
Studying partially sighted children, Pintner and Forlano (1943) found
that girls were markedly more introverted than boys in the elementary
grades, but that no such differences appeared in children above the sixth
grade. Unfortunately, no relationships were reported between introversion and adjustment scores. Boys and girls did not tend to differ on the
adjustment scales, however, and it is possible to infer cautiously that the
relatively higher extroversion of the younger boys was not associated with
better adjustment.
Summary. No consistent pattern of relationship of introversion-extroversion to age, gender, or other variables appears in this group of
studies, and indeed several internal contradictions characterize the findings. The relationship to visual characteristics has apparently not been
examined.
Dominance /submissiveness and aggression
Using the Bernreuter Personality Inventory, Petrucci (1953) found a
pattern of submissiveness in the interpersonal relationships of adolescents with visual impairments. Other authors, for example Bauman
(1964), have mentioned similar tendencies, and in this case there is some
evidence about how dominance/submissiveness is related to other variables. For example, Greenberg, Allison, Fewell, and Rich (1957) found a
general tendency to submissiveness in their study of residential school
adolescents, and dominance scores generally increased from the sixth to
the twelfth grade level. This age progression was considerably stronger
for boys than for girls.
Greenberg and Jordan (1957) hypothesized that higher interpersonal
dominance would be found in blind than in partially sighted adolescents.
Contrary to the hypothesis, no difference was found between the groups
using the Bernreuter Personality Inventory, and in fact on the California
'F' scale, which measures authoritarianism, the group with partial vision
group scored higher.
In her intensive study of mother-child dyads, Imamura (1965) included several variables related to dominance, including succorance (requesting help), submission, and self-reliance. The children, who were
three to six years of age (and therefore younger than those in the foregoing studies), were rated on these characteristics in a series of observational sessions. The blind children tended to be less dominant, though no
more submissive, than an archival group of sighted children. Of more
interest was Imamura's exploration of the relationships between the blind
children's characteristics and the social-interactive characteristics of
their mothers in relation to the child. Most striking was the strong positive
correlation between the child's submissiveness and the mother's
dominance. That is, children may respond to maternal dominance by
adopting a submissive role. (The dynamics may be different for sighted
children and their mothers, since no such correlation emerged in that
group.)
Imamura also evaluated the dimensions of sociable aggression (aggression with the intent of being sociable) and nonsociable aggression (aggression with the intent to harm). There was no consistent pattern of
relationships between maternal characteristics and child behaviors, although curiously, child sociable aggression was positively correlated with
maternal nonsociable aggression.
Summary. No remarkable findings emerge from this body of work, although some evidence of individual differences has been reported. The
research model used by Imamura, in which the child's characteristics are
assessed in relation to features of the social environment, offers more
promise than the simple assessment of personality variables using standardized tests.
Neuroticism
Petrucci (1953) reported a high incidence of neuroticism in adolescents
with visual impairments, but no gender differences were reported. However, Brown (1939), using a variation of the Thurstone Personality
Schedule, did find the distribution of neuroticism scores for blind residential school students higher for girls than for boys.
Greenberg and Jordan (1957), also evaluating high school residential
students, found no differences between partially sighted and blind children on the neuroticism scale of the Bernreuter inventory. As for the
possible relation of neuroticism to age, Greenberg et al. (1957) found a
generally high level of neuroticism in residential school children from
grades 6 to 12, but no variation with age within this grade range.
Overall scores on neuroticism scales are unsatisfying, since the term
covers a range of more specific difficulties. One such aspect is anxiety.
Hardy (1968) described the development of the Anxiety Scale for the
Blind (ASB) as an alternative to the traditional Taylor Manifest Anxiety
Scale (TMAS). Items were intensively screened by clinical experts. The
ASB and the TMAS were each administered twice to 122 adolescents ranging in age
from 13 to 22 years and varying in intelligence and degree
of visual loss. Teacher ratings of students' anxiety were also obtained.
The correlations between teacher ratings of anxiety and ASB outcomes were statistically significant but not impressive. The correlation
between the ASB and the TMAS was .74. There were no marked variations in anxiety scores as a function of severity of visual loss, although
there was a tendency for the children with intermediate visual loss to
score somewhat higher on anxiety. Anxiety scores generally increased
with age, but this did not hold for the group with total blindness. Verbal
intelligence was generally negatively correlated with anxiety scores; that
is, students testing lower in intelligence tended to show higher anxiety
scores. This relationship was, however, not found for the totally blind
children.
Miller (1970) found similar results using the ASB. There were no
overall differences between partially sighted and blind samples of ninth
through twelfth graders, or between special class (EMR) and the regular
residential school sample. Similarly, Wilhelm (1989) did not find consistent patterns of difference between partially sighted and blind children in
the 6- to 17-year age range. Like Hardy (1968), Miller found a general
increase in anxiety with increasing grade level. Miller attributed the
increased anxiety to the older child's impending departure from the
relatively secure residential school environment.
Summary. The literature on these interpersonal characteristics has been
reported only briefly, since it is not at all clear in most instances what, if
any, significance they might have. From any practical or theoretical point
of view, it is of little value to know that children with visual impairments
are more or less introverted, neurotic, or aggressive than sighted children, or for that matter that scores on these scales vary with age, intelligence, school placement, gender, or other individual differences variables. To be useful, research must couple the incidence characteristics of
such factors with an analysis of their implications. For example, the
question may be posed: are older children, with their higher neuroticism
and anxiety ratings, more socially or personally dysfunctional? If not,
then the knowledge is interesting but not important. If so, then additional
questions arise. What factors lead to increased neuroticism and anxiety?
How can they be ameliorated? How, in short, can the visually impaired
child's situation be adjusted to optimize the characteristic in question, so
that the child's capacity to respond adaptively to the demands of his or
her existence can be maximized?
I have used the example of neuroticism, but the same points should be
made about other personality characteristics as well. Researchers fall
short of their obligations if they are content with evaluating characteristics without regard for the variables that influence them, and if they
disregard the functional implications of those characteristics.
Knowledge about sex
A seriously understudied area of social development in children with
visual impairments concerns knowledge of sex and sexual behavior. Cutsforth (1951), Gendel (1973), and Scholl (1974) discussed the specific
problems that visual impairment creates for the child's acquisition of
knowledge about physical and behavioral aspects of sex. However, there is
very little empirical evidence about what children know about sex and
how they acquire their knowledge. There is agreement that the problems
of learning about sex are considerable. Perhaps the most important factor
is that touch is taboo when the topic of learning is sex. Children with
visual impairments are, as sighted children are, generally discouraged
from gaining information about sex via tactual experience with others.
Thus the main problem is access to information. Information about
sex is usually conveyed verbally by parents, siblings, and peers. Two
factors seem relevant. Many parents are hesitant to discuss sex-related
matters frankly with their children, and metaphoric explanations (such as
"the stork") must be at least as puzzling to the child with a visual
impairment as they are to the sighted child. Second, the stimulus for a
parent's explanation is often the child's question; the child without vision
may ask fewer questions of the parent or other informant.
Foulke and Uhde (1974) characterized the blind child's situation:
He knows about his own body because he can explore it freely. He is fairly well
informed about the bodies of playmates of the same sex. He is less well informed
about the bodies of playmates of the opposite sex. He is almost completely
uninformed about adult bodies of either sex. By the time he reaches adolescence,
he has been brought under the control of the taboos of his society, and is no
longer free to explore any body but his own. (p. 194)
At the same time, they noted that "in the course of growing up, the blind
child becomes aware of the emphasis on sexuality in our culture, and a
reasonable consequence of this combination of ignorance and curiosity is
the creation of bizarre theories concerning the anatomy and the functions
of sex" (p. 194). Presumably this problem can only have become exacerbated during the intervening two decades.
Foulke and Uhde presented preliminary information from a questionnaire distributed to a large number of (mostly male) visually impaired
adolescents and their parents and teachers. About half of the children
reported having had discussions of sexual matters with their parents, but
the reports of a majority of these indicated that they had been given
misinformation or had misinterpreted the information given. More children reported having discussed sex with their friends than with their
parents. Definitions of various sex terms were requested, and in general
the results suggested a great deal of misunderstanding.
Similar work is lacking with younger children. It may be assumed,
from the paucity of veridical information that Foulke and Uhde's adolescent informants had, that such study would reveal quite scanty knowledge among younger children as well.
While there are many discussions in the literature about the pros and
cons of various approaches to sex education, there is appallingly little
empirical information available about the actual knowledge that children
and adolescents with visual impairments have about sex. Particularly in
view of the heavy emphasis of contemporary popular culture on sexual
matters, the need for effective sex education is critical. Nevertheless, the
design of effective sex education must be based on knowledge of the
actual state of affairs, and this is a significant gap that should be seriously
addressed.
Locus of control
The term locus of control (LOC) is used to describe a person's perception
of the extent to which he or she is in command of the events that affect his
or her life. Internal LOC describes individuals who see themselves as
exercising substantial control over their lives, while external LOC
describes those who see themselves as being influenced by other people
or by situational variables over which they have no control. Of course
these represent the extremes of a dimension along which people vary
continuously.
The question of LOC is interesting for the case of visual impairment.
According to Tait (1972c), the child with a significant visual impairment
may have difficulty knowing when he or she has another person's attention and may thus frequently initiate unreciprocated social interactions
because the other person is in fact not attending. Tait reasoned that this
dynamic may lead to a sense of lack of control in social interactions and
thus to a relatively external LOC. Indeed, Imamura (1965), studying
three to six-year-old blind children, found a relatively low frequency of
initiation by these children of social contact with the mother and other
adults and children. Of the contacts that were initiated, a high proportion
were succor ant (asking for help). Beyond this, though, the mothers of
blind children were more likely to respond to such succorant contacts by
"noncompliance," "refusal," and "ignoring." These are indeed the kinds
of circumstances which would be expected to lead to relatively external
LOC.
Dote-Kwan (1991) drew a somewhat different picture of these relationships. She found evidence of a greater sensitivity on the parts of
preschool children to their mother's presence, in that the children
tended, appropriately, to initiate fewer interactive behaviors when the
mother was absent. This sensitivity may well have been mediated by a
relatively high degree of partial vision in her sample. However, Dote-Kwan also found a much higher frequency of responsiveness by the
mother to the child's requests for help than Imamura had reported.
Dote-Kwan suggested that the more effective interactive relationship
between mothers and children that she found may have been due to the
fact that all of the children in her sample were participating in an early
intervention program.
Land and Vineberg (1965) did find a general skewing of the distribution of LOC scores (as measured by the Bialer-Cromwell Children's
Locus of Control Scale) toward the external end of the scale; however, the
variability within the group of 6- to 14-year-old children with visual
impairments was great, and some showed as strongly internal LOC as
their sighted peers.
More important for our interests is the relationship of LOC to several
individual differences variables within the population of children with
visual impairments.
CA, MA, and lQ. The trend for sighted children is increasing internalization of
LOC with increasing CA, and this is generally interpreted as
indicating a progressive personal independence as well as a realization that the
child can exert control over the events that affect him or her. The
evidence for CA is mixed for children with visual impairments. Parsons
(1987), studying the age span from 6 to 19 years, did find higher internal
LOC in older than younger children, whereas neither Agrawal and Kaur
(1985) nor Jones and McGhee (1972) found significant CA effects in
samples that were somewhat more limited in age range.
In any case, because of the conceptual component of LOC, mental age
may be a more important correlate. Land and Vineberg (1965) evaluated
children in the 6- to 14-year age range and found a significant correlation
between mental age and LOC: as mental age increased, so did internal
LOC. IQJs of course a derivative of mental and chronological age. The
only study that has reported a test of the IQ^LOC relationship is that of
Parsons (1987). There was not a significant correlation, but the IQ^range
of 85 to 115 may have been too limited to allow a relationship to emerge.
In sum, the evidence is generally that more internal LOC accompanies
a higher intellectual level in children with visual impairments. This is as
expected given the generally increasing conceptual understanding of
causality and interpersonal relationships.
Age of visual loss. Only Agrawal and Kaur (1985) reported an evaluation
of LOC in relation to age of visual loss; the evidence was that the later the
loss, the more likely LOC was to be internal.
Severity of visual impairment. Land and Vineberg (1965) evaluated LOC
in relation to the severity of visual impairment in their group whose
acuity ranged downward from 20/200; the correlation was not
significant.
Gender. No study of children with visual impairments has reported variation in LOC with gender. The general pattern for Caucasian children is
for boys to show somewhat more internal LOC than girls.
Variations in environment. For the most part the studies of LOC have
unfortunately not evaluated variations as a function of aspects of the
child's environment. Two studies, Land and Vineberg (1965) and
McGuinness (1970), compared children from residential and integrated
school settings, and neither found differences. McGuinness observed,
"Despite the fact that subjects in the integrated settings have enjoyed
significantly greater success in social independence their expectations of
success as the result of their own efforts does not differ significantly from
that of subjects from the special school setting" (p. 43). Aside from these
studies, there are no other evaluations of LOC in relation to environmental characteristics.
Summary. With the exception of the interdependent relationship among
chronological and mental age and IQ, the results reported here are of
relationships of LOC with a single factor. The general lack of variation of
LOC with these factors is noteworthy. It seems likely that LOC is indeed
related to such factors as partial vision in complex ways, but univariate
analyses are unlikely to reveal these relationships, whereas multivariate
analyses are more appropriate.
LOC and functional behavior
A more important question has to do with the significance of LOC for
areas of functional behavior. For example, what implications does relatively internal or external LOC have for aspects of adjustment and
achievement?
Agrawal and Kaur (1985) evaluated the relationships among LOC and
various attributes including anxiety and adjustment. Better adjustment
was found in children with internal LOC, and higher anxiety was found
in children with external LOC. (Anxiety and adjustment were negatively
correlated.)
Parsons (1987) also explored the relationship between LOC and adjustment as measured by the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow et al., 1984). LOC was evaluated by use of the Children's Intellectual
Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire (IAR) (Crandall, Katkovsky,
& Crandall, 1965), which evaluates the child's view of his or her own
responsibility for achievement.
On the various subscales of the Vineland, the older children generally
showed higher scores, as expected. Moving to the key question of the
relationship between LOC and adjustment, a significant relationship was
found: higher internal LOC was associated with higher adjustment
scores, both for the communication and the daily living subscales.
Causality is elusive in such a set of findings: it is not clear whether LOC
or adjustment is causal of the other, or indeed whether both variables
might be commonly caused by another constellation of variables related
to child-rearing practices.
In sighted children, internal LOC has been found to be positively
related to motivation and to school achievement (e.g., Lefcourt, 1976).
Jones and McGhee (1972) examined the relationship between LOC and
academic achievement. As hypothesized, internal LOC was generally
associated with good academic achievement. The IAR was also administered, and contrary to the hypothesis, a negative correlation was found
between academic achievement and IAR scores. Generally, higher academic achievement was accompanied by lower perception of self-
responsibility for that achievement. Jones and McGhee suggested that
whatever the individual child's assumptions about self-responsibility for
academic success, these may have been subjugated to a belief that for
blind children in general, external factors are overriding.
Summary. Broad relationships have been found among LOC, age, adjustment, and achievement in these studies. It remains for future research to
establish the causal relationships among variables and to discover other
factors that might also be involved in what is undoubtedly a complex
causal chain.
Related constructs
Several other constructs, such as expectations and level of aspiration, are
similar to LOC in that they are hypothesized to be mediators of performance. One has to do with attribution of blame. Jervis and Haslerud
(1950) evaluated early blind adolescents' reactions to having to perform a
series of frustrating puzzles. They tended to show a higher frequency of
intropunitive (self-blame) reactions than extrapunitive (attributing blame
to others) or impunitive (intellectualization of blame) reactions. In that
they tended to attribute their failure to their own shortcomings, this
finding corresponds roughly to internal LOC.
Me Andrew (i948a,b) assessed level of aspiration by having the child
make a prediction of the amount of hand pressure that he or she could
exert, compared to what had been achieved on a prior trial. The reward
situation was structured so as to put a premium on high values, except that
if the child did not meet his or her own prediction, points would be taken
away. Thus, the assessment was of reactions to success and failure on the
hand pressure task. Generally the children were similar in their pattern of
predictions to a sighted comparison group, although the children with
visual impairments were inclined to react to failure by adjusting their
subsequent predictions downward. These children were 10 to 15 years of
age, with IQJto or above and with varying degrees of visual loss.
Social role expectations. The expectations of other people may be at least
as important as the children's self-expectations in affecting behaviors.
Mayadas (1972) studied the congruence between the role expectations
held by various "significant others" and the actual behavior of adolescents from a school for the blind. The children's self-expectations and
their perceptions of the expectations of significant others were assessed.
Positive relationships were found between the quality of social behaviors
of the children and (1) the expectations of significant others (parents,
teachers, etc.), (2) the children's perceptions of the expectations of significant others, and (3) the children's self-expectations. On the other hand,
there was no relationship between the children's behavior and the expectations of a group of people who had no particular experience with blind
individuals. Thus the results strongly supported the notion of congruence between role expectations, both of children themselves and of
those close to them, and actual behavior.
Mayadas and Duehn (1976) presented a further analysis of data from
(apparently) the same sample. Performance on a variety of social behaviors (e.g., table etiquette, physical self-management, or personal
hygiene) was evaluated and linked to various categories of expectations
through multiple regression analyses. The categories included expectations by parents, counselors, teachers, and houseparents, as well as by the
child. The child's perceptions of these various expectations were also
tabulated and used as predictors of actual performance.
A general result was that a relatively small percentage of the variance in
performance was accounted for by the categories of actual expectations or
the child's perception of them. That is to say, a great deal of variance in
performance is not accounted for by these variables.
More specific differences emerged. For example, girls' behaviors were
more related to the expectations than were boys' behaviors. Mayadas and
Duehn speculated that girls are more sensitive to demands of the social
environment than boys are. Interestingly, girls and boys were equally
unresponsive to external expectations about their social interactions with
the opposite sex.
Generally, Mayadas and Duehn concluded that their results tended to
contradict the "overall prevalence of the 'blind role' as the central organizing
concept for the personality of children with visual impairments.
Despite a marked tendency toward conformity in the total sample, the
subsamples suggest that visually impaired adolescents tend to assert
themselves on meaningful behaviors" (p. 289). Further, "Blindness is not
an all encompassing behavioral trait,. . . sociocultural variables do affect
the behaviors of blind people just as they affect the sighted . . . significant others can help to de-emphasize the blind role and help to develop
the individualized capabilities of the blind child within the context of his
social reality and physical limitations" (p. 289).
Educational and occupational expectations. Bush-LaFrance (1988) evaluated the educational and occupational expectations of 105 visually impaired adolescents, based on their responses to a questionnaire. Questions were designed to distinguish between choices (e.g., "what would
you like to do?") and expectations (e.g., "what do you expect to do?").
The responses were analyzed in relation to amount of visual loss, gender,
self-reported school performance, socioeconomic status, and friends' educational plans. Visual status was a relatively weak negative predictor of
occupational expectations: children with more vision had somewhat
lower expectations. Academic performance and socioeconomic status
were both positive predictors. Together these three variables accounted
for 33% of the variance in occupational expectations. The visually impaired sample showed generally lower occupational expectations than an
archival sample of sighted adolescents.
As for educational expectations, academic performance was the major
positive predictor; socioeconomic status and friends' educational plans
also contributed. These three factors accounted for 37% of the variance.
Visual status was a negligible factor. The educational expectations of the
visually impaired sample were not substantially different from those of
the archival sample of sighted adolescents. Gender was not a predictor of
either variable.
Summary. On the whole, adolescents with visual impairments conceptualize their social roles and behaviors in much the same way that sighted
children do, and they do or do not respond to significant others' expectations according to the same variables that characterize the social behaviors of sighted children. They do not seem to conform to a set of
social expectations that might be thought characteristic of blindness.
The End
excerpt:
part III - chapter 11 of
Blindness and children
- An individual differences approach
DAVID H. WARREN
Department of Psychology
University of California, Riverside
Cambridge University Press, 2009
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511582288
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