Language Disorders

This may seem like common sense to a lot of you and you'll sit there asking me why I've dedicated a blog to this but how many of you have really thought about it? So bear with me whilst I organise my thoughts together.

Being deaf has its obvious impact on language by the fact our language system, and most others, was initially a spoken/heard language until printing systems were introduced and the new skill of writing was developed. Now, that's common sense and I know most of you already know that and are looking at your computer screen right now thinking "really, Nicole?"

But what about blind people?

Would you have guessed that blind people have language problems aside from the obvious lack of vision that makes reading and writing in the typical way impossible?

If you think about life and as a baby, the most important way a child learns is by exploring, seeing and asking questions about the objects in their environment. A blind child from birth does not have that ability. The first words a child learns are labels for objects, and if a child can't see those objects, how are they meant to attribute labels to them? As time goes on, a blind child learns through touching what things are around in our environment but it makes it a lot harder and slower for them to acquire language the way you and I do. They can't just go up and explore the world without someone else there. What they learn has to be in their immediate environment for them to touch. 

Look around you right now and see what is in reaching distance and think about how difficult it would be to learn language solely through having contact with things...

Furthermore, what about non-verbal cues? Most of us hate talking on the telephone because we don't have the ability to see the person's facial features and to pick up all the information about people from body language etc. A lot of information is taken from this and so ultimately, it would result in a blind child/adult from missing out on this and having detrimental effects on their language learning. 

Of course for blind people, their disorder or problems with language is only a matter of delay- meaning they acquire language the same way but at a lot slower pace and the task is much harder. Their language is not deviant (wildly different to a typical person), just delayed.

I don't know about you, but I always seem to forget these small details whenever I think about people who have a language disorder, or any disorder for that matter. It makes me feel incredibly selfish to not have paid more attention but until things are pointed out to us, we go by our life without really paying attention. We're human.

It's interesting and I feel like from my Communication Disorders module that I'm seeing things from a different perspective. I'm becoming more aware about people in this world that aren't typical in their development.

xxx