ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the findings gathered by researchers interested in motor and cognitive development. It presents the development of gross motor skills, discusses the development of fine motor skills, and addresses the issue of blind children’s individual differences in motor development. Large individual differences may exist among blind children’s motor development. In general, those children who show delays in other areas of their development also present dramatically slow motor development. As suggested by the somewhat different results obtained in some of the studies of motor development reported before, blind children do not seem to follow a unique developmental pattern. One important topic for researchers interested in blind children’s development is symbolic play, also referred to as pretend play. Whereas language development follows a reasonably normal rate of development, motor development may be seriously delayed in the majority of blind children.
