The examination of joint attention skills, play skills and communication functions of children with severe visual impairments and sighted children

The purpose of this study was to compare the joint attention skills, play skills, and communication functions of children with severe visual impairments and sighted children. The relationships between joint attention skills, play skills, and communication functions were examined to explore the participant children's joint attention skills in depth. The study included 17 children with severe visual impairments and 20 sighted children, aged between 16-36 months. In this study, developmental ages of the sighted children and children with severe visual impairments in the area of language development were matched to each other. The joint attention skills exhibited by the participants were examined with the coding categories developed by Bigelow (2003), play skills were coded using the Developmental Play Assessment (DPA) tool developed by Lifter (2000), and communication functions were coded using an observation protocol developed by Babacan (2016). Before the study implementations, a pilot study was conducted with one sighted child and one child with severe visual impairment. The data obtained from the joint attention skills, play skills, and communication functions of the participants were analyzed. The results of the study revealed that children with severe visual impairments displayed limited joint attention skills compared to their sighted peers. In addition, the results of the study showed that children with severe visual impairments displayed more indiscriminate play skills while sighted children displayed more symbolic play skills. Furthermore, the findings showed that there were significant and positive correlations between liberally construed joint attention behaviors and play skills categories. The results also indicated that there were meaningful and positive correlations between joint attention skills, pre-symbolic play skills, and symbolic play skills categories. On the other hand, the results of the study showed that children with severe visual impairments displayed limited communication functions than their sighted peers. Finally, the findings of the study suggested that there was a meaningful and positive correlation between liberally construed joint attention behaviors and communication functions.