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Abstract:
This study of 48 children with congenital blindness who attended mainstream schools focused on the tactile and haptic skills they needed in typical academic and everyday tasks. The results showed that, in general, the children mastered such tactile tasks, but some items posed special problems.
Touch is essential for children who are blind to gather information about their surroundings and to perform everyday tasks. Touch gives information not only on the characteristics of objects, such as their shape, size, and texture, but on the functional aspects of objects, such as the possibility that they can be used as tools. Moreover, in the everyday lives of children who are blind, haptic skills are indispensable for functioning as independently as possible. Children who are blind have to solve tasks differently from children who are sighted because they have to use touch instead of vision to obtain information. Moreover, ordinary tasks that are easily performed by using vision may be complex when they are performed by using touch (Jansson, 2008). From a pedagogical perspective, it is essential to teach children who are blind all the possible and relevant strategies to help them cope with everyday challenges (McLinden & McCaIl, 2002), especially since most children who are blind are mainstreamed in regular schools, where they face a reasonable number of tactile challenges whenever they try to solve academic tasks by touch instead of vision.
Researchers in psychophysics and psychology also have a theoretical interest in touch and blindness. People who are blind have to adapt to lives without sight. This situation is fundamentally different from the situation of any blindfolded participant in an experiment on the relationship between perception and action. Several studies have shown that perception and action are narrowly linked in the haptic sense, more than in the other senses (Hatwell, 1978; Hatwell, Orliaguet, & Brouty, 1990; Hatwell, Streri, & Gentaz, 2003). Exploratory actions seem to determine what is perceived and how it is perceived. An example is the distinction between active and passive touch. According to Heller (1984, 1989, 1991, 2000a, 2000b) and Heller and Meyers (1983), active touch is especially important for performing tasks involving the perception of forms or during manipulation of objects to obtain information about them, whereas passive touch...