AbstractsPsychology

It is practically impossible to peruse any discussion relating to psychology or philosophy without encountering frequent references to sense deprivation. These usually take the form of supposititious analogies regarding the world of the blind and the deaf, and, in many cases such analogies are entirely incorrect . It is the aim of the present work to place the aberrations from what is commonly accepted as normal mental development which accompany the loss of vision or hearing, in a more scientific and unprejudiced light than that in which they have hitherto been considered. The writer himself with vision so seriously defective as to place him well within t he scope of the common definition applied to blindness , recently became interested i n the purely psychological aspects of sense deprivation . It occurred to him that psychology as a science ought to be able to contribute toward the solution of the educational and social problems of the blind and the deaf, and he believes that the material incorporated in the following chapters is sufficient to justify this hypothesis. [...]