See is one of the most common words in English. For instance, while time, the most common English noun, gets 3,550,000,000 Google hits, see gets a very respectable 2,980,000,000. This compares well with talk (711,000,000) and eat (253,000,000). This means that blind children can’t really avoid the verb altogether. In fact, look and see are among the very first verbs that blind children learn, just like sighted children.
So what do they think it means?
I probably can’t answer the question completely, but here are some relevant research results:
When a sighted 3-year-old is asked to “look up,” he will tilt their heads upwards, even if they are blindfolded. A blind 3-year-old raises her hands instead.
If told “You can touch that table, but don’t look at it,” the blind 3-year-old will lightly touch the table. If you later tell her she cal look at the table, she may explore all the surfaces of the table with her hands.
It’s not likely that blind children are explicitly taught these meanings for these words, so they probably created what are very reasonable meanings for them.
(This research is summarized in Language and experience: Evidence from the blind child by Barbara Landau and Lila Gleitman.)
Will the sighted person ever really know? It is only by observation that they believe this is the way it is with a blind child. The word, see, is used in so many ways which don’t actually mean to visually look at something.
http://www.brailleinstitute.org
This is consistent with the more general meanings of the words ‘see’ and ‘look’, which are more to do with perception than with vision specifically. (I.e., I saw a friend yesterday, do you see what I mean?, Can I see that thing you’re holding?, Can I look at the pebble? Look what I found! It looks like I won’t have time to finish sanding that bit. If you don’t believe me how cold this thing is, touch it and you’ll see for yourself.) In many if not most daily uses of these words, the specific sense of vision is not really the point. I.e., if I imagine myself interacting with a blind child (or even adult), _I_ would use the words ‘see’ and ‘look’ pretty much exactly how the children in the example use them, and I would expect that the parents and family of those kids would likely use them similarly – “Look at this apple (handing apple to toddler) – see how big and round it is? What a big apple….”, etc.
I wonder what would happen if you actually discussed the words with a 3-year old and asked them what things they could mean. I suspect by that age they would understand that there’s such a thing as vision, and might even know that word ‘see’ can have a specific meaning relating to vision.
I am inclined to agree that the title would be improved if it ended with a question mark. I suspect that the point of this article as written, was to generate intelligent speculation as to how blind children responded to the statements they were asked, thus challenging the participants in this forum to deeply reflect upon that which was offered. In point of fact, the absence of the researchers “conclusions”, as to said behavior of the blind children, compelled me to think deeply and try to reason out what was actually occurring. This seems fair, and perhaps the purpose of this forum. What confuses and bothers me is the lack of constructive criticism herein. This is a science forum, therefore it make perfect sense to frame criticism with scientific discipline and reasoning. Lets assume, for the sake of discussion, that the writer erred, actually, or in terms of someones perception, in the writing of their article. Does that justify the ugly language and thoughtless comments in this blog? Why participate in a science forum if you lack the discipline to evaluate the information that is offered? Such angry responses say nothing about science, but do indicate the limits and poor attitudes of some of the participants. I came to this forum hoping for enlightened dialog and fair play. It is probable that those who have chosen to criticize this article, in the worst terms, will be unreceptive to the need for common decency, and enlightened self-interest. Their example is a clear indication of a dumbed down society.
I would suggest that the blind children are substituting felt-sense for sight. Touch and sound are the only “cognitive” technique that is open to them for relating to the world. Blind children are limited to and responsive to the touch and sounds of their care givers. Therefore this is how they learn to relate to the world. I believe this study demonstrates certain inherent capacities in the developing child. Why and how a blind child, without any training, would point up, when asked to look up, give credence to their capacity for substitution and a yet undefined ability; intrinsically printed in their brain. Why and how a blind child would merely touch a table, when ask to only touch a table, and then proceed to explore the table with their hands, when asked to look at, is consistent with my stated explanation. In short, there appears to be a matrix in the developing brain of young children, blind or sighted, that, through healthy nurturing will, of necessity, be expressed. As well, neurological substitution and adaptation is a well established fact in various disabilities. I offer this for your consideration.
this is interesting.
i liked it. =]
So, there seems to be some unhappiness about the depth of this post. Perhaps this a lesson in overly agressive blog entry titles.
If you want to read some more in-depth discussions of language, I would suggest some of the previous posts.
In my defense, most of the readers seem to be coming in through reddit. Which means a fair number of people liked the article. And I still think it’s interesting data.
Replying to the person who objected to using Google to get word frequency counts. Word frequency is usually calculated by summing up the occurrences of a word in some corpus of text. Ideally, the corpus is large and contains a wide variety of sources. Sounds like Google.
And, in fact, Google is being increasingly used by linguists, especially for the sort of informal analysis I used here.
is a failure
because academics are too silly with all of that “actually having substantial evidence” bullshit. lets just give people some shit i found on google (because typing single words into google and hitting enter is, of course, a perfectly tenable manner of discerning a word’s significance).