Outra forma de ver?

: a construção do autoconceito de crianças cegas e amblíopes

Abstract

Visual impairments is defined as a total or partial damage to the visual system that covers a wide range of visual abnormalities, among which stands out blindness and amblyopia. Whether blindness or amblyopia constitute changes in visual structures, placing therefore limitations to perform activities of daily life, specially involving the sense of sight. It is understood by self-concept the perception one has of himself. When making his self-description, a person enumerates not only descriptive judgments but also evaluative ones, meaning that the self-concept is closely related to self-esteem. This construction process involves not only oneself, but all the agents that are an integral part of their daily lives: family, friends, teachers and school, among others. After reviewing a set of researches about the creation and development of self-concept in children with visual impairments, it was possible to conclude that there aren’t strong views on this matter. If, in one hand, there are researchers who argue that this self-concept creation isn’t distinguishable between disabled and non-disabled people, others argue that there is a greater difficulty in visually impaired children. Furthermore, no reference to this research in the Portuguese population was found. Thus, this dissertation intends to explore the possibility of the existence of differences at the self-concept level among blind and visually impaired children, and children without special needs, as well as differences in school performance, and also the relationship between the self-concept and this. It was created for this purpose a sample of 18 children, 9 with visual impairments (blindness and amblyopia) and 9 without special educational needs, being these two subsamples matched (for age, sex and year of schooling). Applied to the entire sample was the self-concept scale of What I Am Like (Harter, 1985), a social-demographic questionnaire, and data was also collected from the children’s academic performance at the end of the school year. Results suggest that the group with visually impairments has a better self-perception at the behavioral level and tendentiously at the global self-esteem level, while the group without special educational needs is tendentiously more favorable self-perceived in terms of athletic competence. No significant discrepancies were verified with regard to academic performance between the two groups of children. There was no significant association between academic performance and global self-esteem or with self-known academic competence in none of both groups. The results are discussed in light of existing theory and research. A better academic performance is associated with a better self-known behavior among blind and visually impaired children, and the same is associated with a more favorable self-perception of social competence among the children without special needs.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria João Carapeto (Supervisor)