Study on the Acquisition of the Concept of Spatial Representation by Visually Impaired People - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 294

￿ Consider that the manual coordination serves to improve the efficiency and
dexterity of the hands. The hands should be relaxed for any manual activity.
The tension in the hands restricts the neuromotor reflexes that must be produced,
causing stiff and distorted movements, affecting the activity to be carried out.
At the Special School we noted that the activities for mastering bimanual coordi-
nation were conducted with the pupils who lost their vision early in life and those who
lost their vision later. In our observations we found that pupils who developed the
impairment in adulthood demonstrated more difficulties in coordinating both hands in
the activities, such as the activity where they used their non-dominant hand to feel the
outline of the drawing. Moreover, we observed the tension in their hands as cited by
Rubayo et al. ( 2007 ). This was caused by the trauma of having lost their vision.
Many of the activities developed at the Special School were aimed at Braille
literacy or learning. Simon et al. (1991) and Ocha´ta and Espinosa ( 2004 ) point out
that—in general—the visually impaired read with the index finger of the dominant
hand and use the index finger of the other hand to guide them when changing lines.
In children's literacy development, the authors observed that a child only uses one
finger, returning along the same line to start reading the next. They also emphasize
the need for the development of tactile sensitivity and bimanual coordination. The
drawing activity requires similar coordination, as the pupil draws with one hand and
uses the other for orientation.
In order to hold and draw the hand and fingers need to undergo a series of
exercises. Duarte ( 2008 ) points out that Marc Jeannerod calls this preparation “pre-
training of the hand”, which assists in the correlation between opening and molding
of the hand to pick up the object and feel the size and shape of the object.
Little by little the child's mental memory develops of how to hold a pencil and
produce the primary symbolic representation, which along with speech will allow it
to express its repertoire from memory. In children who see, this occurs by imitation
and mediation. In terms of the blind child this will need to be stimulated, since the
lack of vision prevents it from observing and imitating the act of writing and/or
drawing.
In work involving drawings we observed the importance of this memory. A blind
10-year-old pupil, whose name is Laura, was going through a phase of tactile
development when we met her, and as her field of vision before becoming blind
was not sufficient to visualize the shapes of objects and draw them, her motor
memory was not developed enough to render, for example, a square.
In our study, we did not apply methods to teach the pupil how to draw, but
educational situations in which the pupil understands how three-dimensional
representations (models) may represent locations in their daily lives. In these
situations, Laura would feel these models that represented known environments,
exploring and comparing the real objects with the representations, then produced
drawings of these environments. In other situations she would develop mental maps
to solve problem situations. These procedures were adopted for all those who
participated in the survey.