There are very few studies on developmental patterns of play in blind children.
Those studies which do exist suggest that their play is not only delayed but also different
in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Study 1 of this thesis gathered descriptive,
cross-sectional data on the spontaneously-emerging patterns of play behaviour in 16
'educationally blind' children aged 1 year 4 months to 6 years. Study 2 extended Study
1 by gathering further play data and taking measures of concurrent developmental status,
thereby allowing differences in play profiles to be related to both chronological age and
current stage in cognitive, language, social, gross motor and fine motor development.
All eight categories of play commonly found in sighted children were observed in the
group of blind children who participated in these two studies: collaborative, exploratory,
imitative, repetitive, constructive, functional, receptive and pretend play. However,
frequency and duration of engagement varied between children and across age groups,
reflecting both differences in individual developmental profiles and the affordance ofthe
proffered toys. Many of the play behaviours identified correlated significantly with
scores on the developmental measures taken. Children with low scores on sensori-motor
understanding, verbal comprehension and expressive language were more involved in
exploratory play, and significantly less involved in collaborative, constructive and
fantasy play. Although an association between gross and fine motor abilities and
functional play behaviour might have been expected, no significant correlations were
found with scores on either of the motor measures. In contrast, constructive play, rarely seen in the younger children, was significantly correlated with fine motor abilities,
language and social skills.The first two studies observed the children playing mainly with toys which were
typically available to them in their nursery/school, and it was noted that certain toys
appeared to appeal more to the blind child and to engage them differentially. Study 3
was therefore designed i) to allow a comparative investigation of play patterns when
'standard' versus 'blind-friendly' toys were made available, and ii) to provide
longitudinal comparative data over an 18 month period on the development of play in
blind versus typically-developing young children. Four 'educationally' blind and 4
typically-developing sighted children, matched for general cognitive status and aged 3 to
6 years, played with toys, books and art materials which either had or lacked tactile,
olfactory and musical features. Six categories of play were examined, creative,
exploratory, constructive, functional, receptive and pretend play. In all 6 categories,
there were differences in play behaviour for both blind and sighted children when play
took place under 'standard' or 'blind-friendly' conditions. The blind children typically
performed less well in the 'standard' condition, producing less varied play, engaging with
significantly less materials, and spending a greater length of time off-task than the
sighted children. However, in the 'blind -friendly' condition these differences were not
evident.Taken together, these findings suggest that the reported delays in the
development of play in blind children may, in part at least, be due to the type of toys
used in research studies or to the methods in which materials are presented to the
children. Given the important role play is believed to have in development, the findings
have implications for both educational practice and theories of atypical development