THE DEVELOPMENTAL ROLE OF RHYMES AND ROUTINES FOR CONGENITALLY BLIND-CHILDREN

A number of blind children exhibit delays in cognitive functioning and language usage resulting in difficulties in sharing meaningful conver sation by three years. One reason may be that blindness in infancy lim its the availability of information about space, especially distal spa ce and so these children have to rely on other information in making s ense of their environment. Time-based information about actions and ev ents is likely to be very important to blind infants. Rhymes and routi nes depend partially on time-based information and have been reported to be widely used by blind children and their sighted parents. The pre sent study examines the relationship between cognitive and language fu nctioning and the quality and nature of rhymes and routines in four bl ind children and their mothers. All children were able to initiate rhy mes and routines as well as using increasingly sophisticated verbal st rategies and language play. Differences emerged between dyads concerni ng the extent to which they were able to involve objects and space in rhymes and routines. The findings are discussed in relation to the pot ential role of rhymes and routines in the development of blind childre n.