Compensatory modalities

Hearing is the most important compensatory sense in communication. Therefore it is important to follow its development as closely as vision development. It should be known that the responses of severely visually impaired infants differ from responses of sighted infants: a severely visually impaired infant does not turn the eyes toward the sound source but quiets to learn more about the new sounds.

A typical response to a new sound by a nearly blind infant: all movements stop and the infant quiets waiting for more information about the unknown sound.