Prelingual Deafness

Prelingual Deafness

A prelingual deaf individual is someone who was born with a hearing loss or someone whose hearing loss occurred before they began to speak. Infants usually start saying their first words around one year, therefore for a child to be considered prelingually deaf, they would have to have lost their hearing before age one (which is the age at which the majority of hearing losses in children occur). Congenital hearing losses are those that are present at birth, but a child with a congenital hearing loss is also considered prelingually deaf since a newborn infant has not acquired speech and language capabilities yet.