Intellectual disability and visual impairment

Abstract

Children with intellectual disability show different degrees of delay in the social field, in the field of communication and physical development. Very often they have additional auditory and visual impairment. These children learn more slowly than their peers without disabilities, because they have great difficulties in knowledge acquisition and transfer of knowledge from one area to another. The results show that the prevalence of visual impairment in people with IO is moving in different percentages, because it is difficult to diagnose, because these people do not complain of vision problems, while experts and families often attribute atypical patterns of behavior to intellectual disability and so present visually impaired is ignored. Also it is very difficult to examine the visual function at those children. It is a contemporary practice that researchers determine state of vision and visual functions in children with intellectual disability. In addition it is very clear their view that people with intellectual disability should be seen as people with serious visual impairments until proven opposite. Prevalence of visual impairment and intellectual disability is very seldomly studied in our country. This paper will present researches that had an aim to determine the relation between visual impairment and intellectual disability.

Deca sa intelektualnom ometenošću (IO) ispoljavaju različite stepene kašnjenja u socijalnoj sferi, u oblasti komunikacije i fizičkom razvoju. Vrlo često imaju dodatna auditivna i vizuelna oštećenja. Ova deca uče sporije od svojih vršnjaka bez invaliditeta, jer imaju izuzetne teškoće u usvajanju i prenošenju znanja iz jedne oblasti u drugu. Rezultati istraživanja pokazuju da se prevalenca oštećenja vida kod osoba sa IO kreće u različitim procentima, jer je teško postavljanje dijagnoze, pošto se ove osobe ne žale na probleme sa vidom, dok stručnjaci i porodica atipične obrasce ponašanja uglavnom pripisuju intelektualnoj ometenosti i tako se zanemaruje prisutno oštećenje vida. Takođe, kod njih je teško ispitati vizuelne funkcije. Primetna je tendencija savremenih istraživača da kod dece sa IO utvrde stanje vida i vizuelnih funkcija. Pored toga vrlo je jasan njihov stav da osobe sa intelektualnom ometenošću treba posmatrati i kao osobe sa ozbiljnim vizuelnim oštećenjima sve dok se ne dokaže suprotno. Prevalenca oštećenja vida i intelektualne ometenosti je malo proučavana u našoj sredini. U ovom radu prikazaćemo istraživanja čiji cilj je bio utvrđivanje prevalence oštećenja vida i intelektualne ometenosti.