Date of Award

8-1973

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Special Education and Communication Disorders

First Advisor

William Callahan

Abstract

The frozen posture of a young child as he visually attends to something of interest, or the very young infantTs wide open eyes and mouth as he fixes on a stimulus, illustrate dramatically the close relationship between the visual system and the total action system. The two appear to be inseparable and interdependent.

When vision is impaired, control of posture may be impaired as evidenced by the typical delay in head righting in prone and all-fours postures of the blind infant. (Gesell and Amatruda, 1941; Gesell et al, 1949) In other children with severe visual impairment a peculiar head posture may be assumed in order to fix the eyes to receive the object stimulus on the most favorable part of the retina. (Gesell et al, 1949) Certain children with learning disabilities may also reflect visual problems either of oculomotor or perceptual causes in peculiar postures as they perform visuomotor tasks.

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