Development of the Infant with Disability

  • Louise Bøttcher
  • Jesper Dammeyer
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development book series (CHILD, volume 13)

Abstract

Developmental incongruence is the mismatch between the child’s biologically based development and the cultural forms of support and demands. The analysis of incongruence during infancy opens up for an understanding of how time and timing become crucial in the development of disability. From early on, the infant is invited into and participates in social and emotional life and early communication. However, many types of impairments impact on the relations between parents and the infant. Some types of impairments are associated with difficulties in engaging in social-emotional relationships. Others affect early relationship-building through their impact on the ability of the child to participate interactively in the same way as other infants. It is shown from developmental psychology research how a potential escalating effect of the early incongruence to a developmental delay vis-à-vis peers and institutionalised trajectories later on stresses the importance of early intervention. What starts out as an incongruence in social interaction with a blind child due to an unmet need to synchronise in non-visual modalities may later result in difficulties in joint attention, attachment, theory of mind, and emotional regulation, making the child more and more out of synchronisation with typical cultural-historical institutionalised developmental trajectories. Another focus of the chapter is the role of the parents. Parents’ reactions to their infant with disabilities are reinterpreted in a cultural-historical disability perspective in terms of how the parents handle the emerging incongruence of their child’s development.

Keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorder Social Situation Activity Setting Joint Attention Deaf Child 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Louise Bøttcher
    • 1
  • Jesper Dammeyer
    • 2
  1. 1.Danish School of EducationAarhus UniversityCopenhagenDenmark
  2. 2.Department of PsychologyUniversity of CopenhagenCopenhagenDenmark

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