Hearing Impairment

Meaning
• Hearing and speech play a joint role
in communication.
• It is therefore hearing impaired
children face double problem.
• One in the area of reception other
in the area of communication.
• Hearing impairment is of two
types - deaf and hard of hearing.
• Those people are deaf have a
hearing loss to the extent that it
prevents understanding speech
through ear.
• People who are hard of hearing can
process information from sounds
and can be benefited by hearing
aids.
Characteristics of
Hearing Impaired
Children
Intellectual Abilities
• Intellectual functioning of hearing
impaired people is limited to less
than average.
• It is because one third of
intellectual development depends
upon what we listen in the
environment
• Pintner and Paterson on the
basis of their studies found that
severely hearing impaired have
minimum IQ of 63 and medium
IQ of 91.
• They found no significant
difference between the deaf and
the normal in 12 studies.
Educational Achievement

• Children and adults who have

mild hearing loss generally
achieve more in academics than
those whose hearing losses are
severe.
• Deaf by birth tend to have more
difficulty in academics than
those who become deaf after 8
or 10 years from the life.
• Hearing impaired children who
belong to high socio-economic
status experience fewer
academic difficulties.
• Hearing impaired children don't
perform well like normals but
their ability in performing arts or
fine arts is no lesss than
normals.
Social development and
Adjustment
• They stay in isolation due to poor
communication ability and
frustation.
• As a result their social development
is adversely affected.
• They show very high degree of
emotional instability causing
maladjustment
Behavioral Characteristics

• Hearing impaired people are

deviant from the norms and
traditions of the society.
• Some people cope with the
reality of deafness as a life long
condition and lead normal life.
• People who are deaf teach each
other how to function in the
society and how to get along
others.
• Deaf people mostly prefer to
have company of hearing
impaired people and in this way
group of hearing impaired
people are formed.
Physical Capacities
• People who are deaf or hard of
hearing are no more or less than
normal people in other sensory
abilities like sight,smell taste and
touch.
• They basically differ in functional
hearing from their peers or
other normal people.
Communication Abilities

• Language development is
delayed if hearing loss is of
moderate type.
• These people less vocabulary
power than the normals
• Verbal communication ability
may be zero if hearing
impairment is zero.
• As hearing impaired people
avoid to interact with others,
their language abilities are
retarded.
• Normal people neglect hard of
hearing people as they require
to communicate at high pitch.
• As a result deaf or hard of
hearing people have less chance
of interaction with others.
Thank you🙏