Introduction: Delays in theory of mind (ToM) of children who are congenitally blind have often been attributed to the absence of visual and social experiences. However, these delays could also be partly due to neural factors. In some children, the blindness itself has neural causes (ocular-plus blindness). Children whose blindness has an…

Reaching for sound-producing and silent objects was assessed in seven infants who had been blind from birth. Objects were presented while they were in tactile contact with their bodies, immediately after withdrawal, or without prior contact. The study found that sound elicited reaching earlier than did antecedent tactile contact. These findings…

Previous studies have reported that congenitally blind children without any additional impairment reveal a developmental delay of at least 4 years in perspective taking based on testing first-order false-belief tasks. These authors interpret this delay as a sign of autism-like behavior. However, the delay may be caused by testing blind children…

This empirical study compared the average ages at which four children with congenital blindness acquired 32 fine motor skills with age norms for sighted children. The results indicated that the children experienced extreme developmental delays in the acquisition of manual skills and a high degree of variability in developmental delays within and…

This empirical study compared the average ages at which four congenitally blind children acquired 29 gross motor skills with age norms for sighted children. The results indicated distinct developmental delays in the acquisition of motor skills and a high degree of variability in developmental delays within and across the six subdomains that were…

Perceptual perspective taking is regarded as a major milestone in sociocognitive development that sighted children have generally mastered by the age of 4-5 years. In children who are blind, however, most prior research reports a strong developmental delay of several years compared with sighted peers. After examining the current state of research,…

Five full-term and five preterm children with blindness (age 12 months) were visited at home with their families every two weeks for two years. An individualized, disability-specific early intervention that used different types of parent involvement was successful in accelerating development of the full-term infants, particularly in orientation…