Teaching 1 Coaching Athletes with Visual Impairments Paul Ponchillia, Ph.D. Professor, Western Michigan University Department of Blindness & Low vision Studies The characteristics of athletes with visual disabilities vary widely, making predictions of athletic performance difficult. However, the nature of visual loss causes some common consequences that, if known, help coaches understand the origins of certain behaviors and provide a means by which to problem solve. Paramount among them are: (a) the age at which the impairment had its onset and (b) the degree and type of the athlete's visual loss. Persons who were born with visual limitations tend to have some difficulty with conceptual constructs or motor abilities, while those who experienced losses later in life will more likely encounter emotional effects of the loss; at least during early stages of adjustment. However, these effects range from virtually none to severe within each subgroup. Age at Onset C:\sec.class\coaching Child Development Congenital visual impairments, as defined here, have their onset during prenatal or early childhood development. The earlier they occur, the more profound their effects tend to be. Early onset affects cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains of development in ways that can have consequences on a person's ability to perform the skills required for athletics. Cognitive Development The limitation in the cognitive domain relates primarily to the nature and degree of the body of knowledge one holds as an adult and is a result of learning without visual input. When sight is severely limited, learning must occur throughTeaching 2 the less efficient senses of touch and audition (Lowenfeld, 1972). The tactual sense is helpful in that it is a relatively concrete sense when compared to sight, but it is limited in scope and range. Many items are too far away, too small or large, too hot or cold, or moving too fast to explore tactually. Hearing is beneficial for learning because it needs little training and has a larger physical range than does touch, but is limited by one's inability to direct it and by its relatively abstract nature. The sounds one desires to glean from the environment are sometimes masked by others, but perhaps more importantly, sounds are not always easily related to their sources. If a child never connects the ticking of a clock to the clock itself, for example, the information has no practical meaning. Even more complex are the concepts involving space. The relationship of self to objects and objects to other objects is extremely difficult for those who have never seen (Cratty, 1971). Sight is also limited in scope and range, but is certainly superior to audition and touch. Unless parents or teachers intervene, the result of these limitations is that severely visually impaired children are not exposed to the same amount of information as are their sighted counterparts, nor is the information as concrete. The practical implications for coaches, particularly of novice athletes, are that they must be more aware of prerequisite skills, conceptual developmental schemes, and must be sure that intellectual understanding is supported by actual performance. Specifically, coaches may encounter those who express intellectual knowledge about certain activities like long jumping, but may not be able to perform them physically. Another common practical problem may arise when some learners are expected to understand the spatial relationship of one piece of equipment to another. For example they may know how to find the rowing machine and the stationary bike from the door of the workout room, but not know how to get from one to the other. One remediation that has proven helpful for use with those who read braille is a description that relates one object to another through the familiar dots in the braille cell. The cell is composed of six dots placed in two columns and three rows. They are numbered one through three going down the left column and four through six down the right. Using this system, the room might be described as: "the rowing machine is at dot 1, the bike at dot 2, the door at dot three", and so on. This technique is also good for describing the layout of a large area, like a gymnasium. Psychomotor DevelopmentTeaching 3 The development of motor skills is measured through the milestones of grasping, sitting independently, crawling, standing and walking. In general, children with severe visual limitations attain them at later ages than do children with normal vision (Ferrell, 1986). Because stimulation for motor involvement in seeing children is primarily from visual feedback, there is little reason for preschoolers with severe visual limitations to reach for things or move toward them. Thus, there is less exploration, less overall body movement, and less learning about the environment. In addition, movements tend to be less fluid and deviations in posture and gait are more common in such youngsters as a result of these limitations (DiFrancesco, 1980). This is also true because motor skills are to some extent learned through observation (Lowenfeld, 1973). Therefore, the practical problem facing a coach who works with adult athletes with severe congenital visual impairments is one of limited agility and dexterity. Also, many persons who had early onset of blindness tend to be physically guarded, and as such, may demonstrate limited range and degree of movement. Inability to stop a goal ball that is thrown within a foot or two of the person is common because there may be a reluctance to reach out from the body. Remediations include modeling the action and providing a great deal of opportunity. Lack of motor involvement during child development may also manifest itself in repetitive behavior such as rocking, head swinging, and eye poking (Griffin, 1981). In general, persons exhibiting these behaviors are not consciously aware of their occurrence which makes them difficult to control. Interestingly increased inner ear stimulation, like spinning on a merry-go-round or increased physical activity appears to eliminate them during the activity. However, they will likely return at activity's end. New coaches should understand the origin of such behaviors and that simply informing the athlete of them will likely have little effect. Remediations are possible, but take a great deal of time.
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