ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research on sighted and blind infants’ early social and communicative development. It discusses the development of social interaction, the development of the self, and the beginnings of communication in young children without visual deficits. The chapter argues that blind children and their parents develop alternative forms of social interaction and early communication, which are able to provide different routes for the development of the child as a social, communicative being. Blindness denies some infants of the many opportunities for eye contact and reciprocal gazing that normally draw sighted infants and their primary caregivers together in the early stages of their developing relationship. The sombre picture presented earlier for blind infants is not in any way generalizable to all blind infants. Interest in the development of a theory of mind began with the study of non-human primates. Knowledge of the self develops most easily in early social interaction.
