THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION IN BLIND CHILDREN.
Item
-
Title
-
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION IN BLIND CHILDREN.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8023702
-
identifier
-
8023702
-
Creator
-
GELBER, ALLAN H.
-
Contributor
-
David J. Bearison
-
Date
-
1980
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Psychology, Developmental
-
Abstract
-
The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of blind children's social cognitive understanding, and further define the role of vision in social cognitive functioning. While Piaget does not claim that vision is necessary for adequate cognitive development, he did posit a possible delay in the attainment of some capabilities (Piaget in Gottesman, 1976) due to impoverished visual schemes.;Although most of Piaget's work has focused on children's acquisition of physical concepts, Piaget also postulated a parallel structural development of social cognition (Piaget, 1970). Social cognition being defined as the understanding of people (self and others), and social relationships.;In the present study three tasks were used to assess the social cognitive coordination of multiple perspectives in 47 sighted and 41 congenitally blind males and females, ranging from five to eleven years of age. The children were of normal intellectual and emotional functioning, and the blind children had no other physical handicaps.;In the first task, designed to assess sensory perspective taking, each child was presented with six common objects (a fork, pencil, toothbrush, cap, scissors, and hammer) one at a time, to be manipulated and placed appropriately in the experimenter's hand.;In a hypothetical dilemmas task, two stories containing social conflict situations were read to each child. A series of questions followed to determine the degree to which the child could understand the story characters, people in general, and him or herself. In the projective perspectives task, the experimenter described to each child three characters in a specific setting. The child was then asked to make up a story involving all the characters, and to retell the story from the perspective of each character.;Three major hypotheses were tested by multivariate analyses of the data. They concerned: (a) the sequential development of social cognition from preoperational to operational stages with increasing age; (b) the existence of a delay in the social cognitive development of blind children; and (c) the tendency for this discrepancy between blind and sighted children to decrease with age. Sex, age, and visual condition were independent variables, and scores on the three social cognitive tasks, the dependent variables.;Results supported the developmental nature of social cognitive awareness in both blind and sighted children. On the sensory impressions task there was a significant difference at age six but not at age eight or ten between the blind and the sighted children. A significant difference between the blind and the sighted was found on the hypothetical dilemmas task at age eight. These results supported the hypotheses of delays in social cognitive functioning in blind children, and a decrease in this disparity with age. Differences between the sighted and the blind were not significant on the projective perspectives task. No sex effects were found.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Education
