Social & Cognitive Impact
Children who are prelingually deaf and cannot hear noise beneath 60 decibels, which is about the intensity level of a vacuum cleaner, will not be capable of developing oral language to that of their peers. Children born with profound hearing impairment, 90 decibels and above (about the level of a food blender), are classified as functionally deaf. These children will not develop speech and language skills without help from a speech pathologist. Such children will acquire language comprehension difficulties, even when other modes of language (such as writing and signing) are up to their age level standard. Generally, prelingual deaf individuals have reading levels that do not exceed the level of a fourth grader's. Children who lose their hearing after they have acquired some amount of language, even if it is just for a short while, demonstrate a much higher level of linguistic achievement than those who have not had any language exposure.
In children, this type of hearing loss can lead to social isolation for several reasons. First, the child experiences delayed social development that is in large part tied to delayed language acquisition. It is also directly tied to their inability to pick up auditory social cues. This can result in a deaf person becoming generally irritable. A child who uses sign language, or identifies with the Deaf culture does not generally experience this isolation, particularly if he/she attends a school for the deaf, but may conversely experience isolation from his parents if they do not know, or make an effort to learn sign language. A child who is exclusively or predominantly an oral communicator can experience social isolation from his or her hearing peers, particularly if no one takes the time to explicitly teach them social skills that other children acquire independently by virtue of having normal hearing.
Read more about this topic: Prelingual Deafness
Famous quotes containing the words social, cognitive and/or impact:
“If the Russians have gone too far in subjecting the child and his peer group to conformity to a single set of values imposed by the adult society, perhaps we have reached the point of diminishing returns in allowing excessive autonomy and in failing to utilize the constructive potential of the peer group in developing social responsibility and consideration for others.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Realism holds that things known may continue to exist unaltered when they are not known, or that things may pass in and out of the cognitive relation without prejudice to their reality, or that the existence of a thing is not correlated with or dependent upon the fact that anybody experiences it, perceives it, conceives it, or is in any way aware of it.”
—William Pepperell Montague (1842–1910)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)