Effect of Blindness and Deafness on Development?

Question

Hello, I'm interested in knowing which disability from birth poses a greater threat to emotional and mental development of a person - Blindness, or deafness?

I'm asking because there's a special class in my school for deaf kids - although being on average 3-5 years older than other students, they seem to have more youthful/juvenile dispositions than non-deaf students. (yeah, working with the political correctness here)

Sources greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I think they would both tend to affect development in different ways. It's not always just the disability which is the affect though sometimes parents and other adults tend to 'baby' disabled children because they feel it's 'for their own good'

Most deaf children would be a bit behind in the language development as they have the disadvantage of not being able to copy what they hear. Also sign language and lip reading both need to be learnt. These things would really affect social development which in turn would affect emotional development (as lonliness etc is something that will trigger off emotions in people) which in turn will affect cognitive (mental) development as it is harder to learn etc if you are not emotionally ready.

I can't find anything which actually talks about how blindness affects development but I did find something which said that 80% of what we learn comes from vision so it would slow them down a bit.

I also found something a while ago which said that while both these disabilities in isolation (e.g blind or deaf) can cause problems with development the combination is way more powerful. It's much higher than the doubling effect you would expect.

Here are some source's