Introducing the Long Cane | Part 2

Bottom-Up Approach (The Promotion Model)

The child is not born with concepts of the world. The baby is born with sensory systems, like fingers of the brain, that gather information. With sensory and motor experiences the child matures over time and gives purposeful thought to what is experienced. One way to describe this process is bottom-up, which means that out of the experience comes the concept. If the experiences we give children who are blind are developmentally sound they will experience independent movement and travel age/stage appropriately. Children who are blind or visually impaired will develop the concept or self-perception of themselves as travelers.

Historically, conventional O&M was developed as an adult-centered approach. Its protocols were developed from an adult point of view for adult learners. For instance, the adult was given the concept of a new skill and the skill demonstrated for him/her. Then the newly blinded adult would perform the skill. This can be described as a top-down approach, which means that out of the concept comes the experience. This is a very different approach than bottom-up, which is the perspective of the Promotion Model.

Bottom-up is driven by the sensory and motor experiences of the child, and top-down driven by the cognitive concepts directing the movements of the adult. For example, when children who are visually impaired under three years of age are learning to use the cane, they will need to be amused, explore, and have fun with their cane. Their movements will be more exaggerated and less refined. On the other hand, these are not the behaviours or the goal of the adult learning cane travel for the first time; adults will be ready to perform at a different cognitive level of understanding.

When promoting independent movement and travel in children with visual impairments, we need to approach skill acquisition from the bottom-up, making sure our intervention and practice is suited to the developmental ability of the child. Imposing a top-down approach at a developmentally inappropriate level will meet with frustration and disappointment for both the child and the teacher. As a result, the conventional O&M instructor often assesses that the child is not ready for O&M instruction or ready for using a cane. In the latter case, a pre-cane device is often used. Within the Promotion Model, however, the blind child is ready for instruction, just not from the top-down but rather from the bottom-up (Cutter, 2007).

Next week, we will look at Part 3 in the series where we explore the benefits of the long cane with tips on how we can introduce it to young children.

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Thanks for reading!

Jax@TactileCollective

Reference:

Cutter, J. (2007). The Promotion Model (nfb.org)