Does Daltonism influence young children's learning?

Anomalies in colour vision constitute a particular type of sensory deficiency whose influence in educational contexts has attracted surprisingly little research attention given its ubiquitous use in various learning activities as a code, an aid, or even as the focus of the activity itself, especially during early education. We here describe a three-part investigation of the incidence and influence of Daltonism in a sample of 1039 preschool children. In the first study, the incidence of Daltonism was found to be more than 5% of the boys and less than 0.5% of the girls. The second study looked at how well certain standard classroom tasks involving colour perception were performed, and confirmed the expected negative influence of Daltonism. In the third study, however, no significant differences were found between the two groups in their scores on standard preschool tests of acquired concepts and skills, whereas their teachers, who still did not know which of their pupils had colour vision problems, in responding to a curricular competence questionnaire assessed the Daltonic pupils as somewhat poorer achievers than the non-Daltonic group. The present results should help parents and teachers improve their awareness of this deficiency and of the limitations that it imposes on the early stages of learning.