Development Educational Approaches Treatment Statistics References
The Effects of Sensory Deprivation in Children
Communicative Development and Severe Hearing Impairment
Objectives
* To look at the effects of sensory deprivation.
* To find out about the development of language acquisition and some educational approaches.
* To investigate possible treatments.
* To view statistics about the children suffering from this.
~ What is sensory deprivation?
Sensory deprivation is deprivation of an external sensory stimulation as by prolonged isolation.
~ What kind of children feel the effects of sensory deprivation?
Over one million children in the United States are hearing impaired and the majority of these children are considered prelingually deaf. The children who are affected are those with significant hearing impairments that can be present at birth (congenital) or that occur prelingually.
Hearing impairment: a loss or inability to hear sounds.
Prelingually deaf: a hearing impairment that occurs before the infant has learned to speak.
~ Why does a hearing impairment affect language acquisition and cause this deprivation in children?
Sensory deprivation has many effects on hearing impaired children. We realize that it is essential for children to be exposed to a language to learn one. We know this because we learn only the language or languages we hear spoken around us. Therefore, if certain conditions limit linguistic experience, language development may be severely hindered, which is the case when dealing with children with a hearing impairment.
Children who are born with hearing impairments that limit their perception of sounds, usually will not be able to develop natural oral language that equals that of normal children.
Children who are born with a profound loss are considered functionally deaf and will not develop speech and language skills naturally. These children will ultimately demonstrate language comprehension difficulties.~ Can the hearing impairment vary in severity and therefore vary in there its effects on language acquisition?
Yes, hearing loss varies in severity and type. It’s possible for a hearing impairment to be severe enough to limit reception of almost all important linguistic and environmental functions or just miss simple whispering.
Therefore, the extent to which a child is handicapped depends on four things.
1) The severity of the loss.
2) The conditions causing the loss.
3) The utility of assertive devices in restoring some hearing ability.
4) The age at which the hearing loss occurred.
Also, losses that are congenital and prelingually are much more disruptive of the language acquisition process than are losses acquired later in life. Children who have had access to language, even for a short time, demonstrate a higher level of linguistic achievement than those who have not had similar exposure.