Eye-Gaze & Cerebral Palsy: Causal Mechanisms, Functional Vision and Learning Purposeful Control

This session will discuss some of the author’s recent work exploring how young children with cerebral palsy develop their understanding of the causal mechanisms needed to purposefully control an eye-gaze system. The session will include a summary of the background literature on eye-gaze access and will centre on recently published work looking at whether children can infer for themselves the causal link between eye movements and purposeful control of an eye-gaze system, as well as looking at the impact of a teaching intervention. Further work on the contribution of children’s functional vision skills to their purposeful acquisition of eye-gaze control will form part of the session, as well as looking in more detail at how these skills can be assessed and understood by clinicians and educators. Discussion of the findings and areas for future work will conclude the session.