Our experience of the world, our 'reality', comes through our senses. People with hearing and/or visual impairments, in a sense, have a different 'reality'. They don't experience the world in the same way as sighted hearing people but with gaps; their whole knowledge and experience of the world are different.
Distance and close senses
Sight and hearing are often called the distance senses because they give us information about what is happening around us. Touch, taste and the balance senses are close senses, giving information only about what is happening now, within arm's reach. Smell gives some distance information, but is much less useful to us than sight and hearing. Sight and hearing provide most of the information we use to learn and function.
Very young babies mainly use touch, taste and smell, but even from birth they get some information from sight and hearing. Over time, they develop visual and auditory skills which enable them to get better-quality information and interpret it more usefully.
Compensatory information
When one distance sense is impaired, information from the other can be used to compensate to some degree - for example, a deaf person lipreading. People with single sensory impairments can also use their undamaged sense to keep in constant contact with the world around them. Deafblind children, however, cannot use either sense to compensate.
The impact of deafblindness is multi-sensory impairment.
Children who are multi-sensory-impaired need to get as much information as possible from their residual sight and hearing and other senses. Touch can provide a means of learning about the world and of communicating. Some deafblind children become very skilled in using smell, for example to identify people. Some children recognise movement around them because of changes in air pressure on their skin.
Many children who are multi-sensory-impaired have impairments of other senses, as well as sight and hearing. They may have poor balance, limited movement, under- or over-sensitive touch or damage to their sense of smell.
Deafblind children may:
- be unable to use more than one sense at a time
- show significant delays in responding to things they have seen, heard, touched or smelled
- be 'tactile defensive' - unwilling to touch or be touched. This may be due to tactile over-sensitivity, but is often a response to past handling
- be very slow to develop skills in using vision or hearing or other senses
- have fluctuating (varying) levels of sight and/or hearing - so they may see an object one day, but not the next. This is highly confusing and frustrating, and it often leads others to assume they can see or hear more than they can.
Children who are multi-sensory-impaired rarely learn to use their senses as well as possible on their own. They need skilled assessment, appropriate environments and help to develop their use of sight, hearing, touch and other senses.
Some deafblind children will be completely isolated when left alone, because they cannot hear or see what is happening around them. They may not realise that an adult who has moved away from them still exists.
Further information
The following books have information on sensory function and development in children who are multi-sensory-impaired:
Vision for Doing by Stuart Aitken and Marianna Buultjens
This is available online at the Scottish Sensory Centre's website.
Deaf-Blind Infants and Children by J.M. McInnes and J.A. Treffry
Published by University of Toronto Press Inc. in 1993; ISBN: 0802077870
Liz Hodges' chapter, 'Effective teaching and learning', in Teaching Children who are Deafblindedited by S. Aitken, M. Buultjens, C. Clark, J.T. Eyre and L. Pease
Published by David Fulton Publishers in 2000; ISBN: 1853466743
Making Sense Together
by Rosalind Wyman
Published by Souvenir Press Ltd in 2000;
ISBN: 0285635107
Using a Multisensory Environment: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Paul Pagliano
Learning Through Interaction edited by Nick Bozic and Heather Murdoch
Learning Through Touch by Mike McLinden and Stephen McCall
