Abstract / Summary
Purpose: Previous research on communication development in school-age children with visual impairment identified structural language as an area of relative strength and pragmatic language as an area of relative weakness. However, these studies included children who had some visual experience and predated the COVID-19 pandemic and pervasive child screen use, both of which affected communication development in sighted children. The present study examined whether past communication patterns in congenitally blind children are evident today by assessing all five domains of language using caregiver report and spontaneous conversation.
Method: A cross-sectional matched case-control design was used. Ten children with total congenital blindness, ages 5–14 years, were individually matched with 10 sighted children. The Children’s Communication Checklist–Second Edition (CCC-2) assessed communication skills in everyday contexts, and conversational language samples elicited during an online research session were assessed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT).
Results: Children with congenital blindness had lower overall CCC-2 communication scores than sighted peers, with differences concentrated in Initiation, Scripted Language, and Nonverbal Communication, all aspects of pragmatic language. The remaining CCC-2 subscales did not reliably differ between groups. No significant group differences during conversation were identified using the standard measures in SALT.
Conclusions: The pattern reported in earlier research was partially evident. Structural language was comparable between groups, while caregiver reports identified differences in pragmatic communication that were not observed during spontaneous conversation. Thus, strengths and weaknesses across the five language domains differed by assessment method.