The Development of Sighted People's Understanding of Blindness

Abstract

In a study of sighted peoples understanding of blindness, 103 subjects in five age groups (preschool through adult) were asked questions in open-ended interviews. The interview data were summarized using four indexes: of realism and richness in discussion of blindness, of unrealistic beliefs, of negative beliefs about blindness, and of negative beliefs about blind people. Although there were no statistically significant main effects by sex, significant age-group effects were found. That is, the older subjects expressed more accurate and detailed knowledge about blindness, but they also expressed more unrealistic and more negative beliefs than did the younger subjects.