Blind mum’s baby born communicator
From birth on, people use their eyes to communicate. Smiling at babies and games like peek-a-boo learn babies about the world around them. It is even claimed that the engaging parental gaze stimulates the brain development of young children. What happens with a baby when its mother is blind? Researcher Atushi Senju of Birkbeck College of the University of London was fascinated with this question for years.
Far from being disadvantaged, babies of blind mothers develop better communication and attention skills than their peers, according to research. “One of the early signs of autism in children is a reluctance to make eye contact. Studies have also shown that when children are profoundly deprived of social communication (for example in certain children’s homes) or when they are born blind, some of them can develop autistic-like behaviors.”
Eye contact key element
Senju wanted to establish whether eye-contact was the key element in such situations. His study, compared the communication skills of five babies of blind mothers with a group of children of sighted parents. He found no signs of autistic-like behavior in children born of blind parents, either when they were babies or when they became toddlers.
“What was interesting,” says Dr Senju, “was that although the mothers were unable to teach their babies to follow their gaze, they were just as capable as other infants in following the eyes of a stranger when she shifted her attention from one toy to another.” The study found that babies whose mothers were blind directed their gaze less often towards their parent’s face than did children of sighted parents, and they communicated more vocally with the parent than children of the same age.
Like children of bilingual parents
“What we hadn’t expected was that the children of blind parents would be able to adapt their mode of communication, depending on who they were interacting with – that they would use eye contact with strangers in a normal way and be able to interpret their gaze, but communicate more vocally with their blind mothers,” says Dr Senju. He compares this with the children of bilingual parents. Several studies have shown that switching between languages enhances various aspects of development in infants growing up bilingually. The same could be true of children of blind parents.
The most striking finding of the study is that children of blind parents are developmentally more advanced than their peers, at an early age. Children whose mothers were blind outperformed their peers in general cognitive skills tests when they were about six to ten months old. They were better at remembering a toy that they had been playing with when it was hidden from them. They also scored higher in attention tests.
“Our study shows that being brought up without the experience of eye contact from the mother (or primary care-taker) does not stop babies from being able to interpret visual clues in other people,” adds Dr Senju. “Nor does it hinder the development of normal social-communication skills.”
