Hearing impairment Flashcards
What is conductive hearing loss?
- Interference of sound progress across ear canal and middle ear
- Can often be fixed
Caused by:
- Foreign bodies (crayon)
- Malformed ear canal (Treacher Collins = no outer ear)
- Otitis media (glue ear/middle ear infection; insert grommet straw like tube)
What is sensori-neural hearing loss?
- Caused by defects in the inner ear or auditory path to brain
- Permanent
Caused by:
- Pre-natally = inherited or illness
- Postnatal = during delivery, early weeks/months illness
How is hearing loss measured?
- Tested using five frequencies
- Hertz (Hz) measures frequency
- Loudness of frequency measured in (dB) Decibels
- Low freq = 25-500Hz = vowels
- Middle freq = 500-2000Hz
- High freq = 2000-8000Hz = consonants, fricatives and affricates
At what dB are you deaf?
x 5
- Mildly = 20dB
- Moderately = 50dB (speech pass them by)
- Severely = 70dB (speech pass them by)
- Profoundly = 100dB
- Totally = 120dB
Characteristics of deaf speech
Articulation = vowels difficult, substitutions and deletions common
Suprasegmental = flat prosody, unusual intonation and nasal
Pitch and quality of voice = Breath control issues and speaking issues
- largely unintelligible for severely and profoundly deaf
- poorer grammar
- 6 months babbling different
Reading for Deaf
- Inner speech mediates reading by silent understanding
- Inner speech assists in production of symbols and words in writing
- Missed early experience
- Cannot sound out
- Can’t make link between sounds and words on page
- Visual coding is poor
- Difficulties in beginning reading, rarely beyond age of 9-10 y/o ability
Writing for Deaf
- Grammatical issues
- Short sentences
- Do not rely on reading back over writing
- Good spelling
Language acquisition and hearing impairment
- Age of loss is crucial variable
- Those deaf at birth and those deafened after acquisition are distinctly different
Identifiers of a deaf chil
- History of ear infections
- Earaches
- Limited vocab
- Loud or quiet speech
- Watching speaker’s face
- Day dreaming
- Tire easily
Hearing tests
Distraction test = 18 months, play sounds and visual
Co-operative test = verbal instructions
Conditioning techniques
Language characteristics of conductive hearing loss
- Delayed, poorer vocab, weaker grammar, slower reading and phonological disorders
Language characteristics of sensori-neural hearing loss
- Speech is L2
- Cultural transmission carried out by others if parents are deaf
- Sign language
Hearing aids
Body worn = most powerful, not discrete
Bone conductor = like headphones shape, vibrate through bone to skull to stimulate cochlea
Post aural = less powerful, worn outside ear (typical model), settings to focus on speaker, can give artificial feedback (eg. squeaking)
In the ear = not suitable for children as ear constantly growing and changing
Cochlear implant
What is it?
Opinions?
- Artificial inner ear
- Provides sound signals to the brain
- Sounds robotic
- Brain surgery
- For those with profound hearing loss or acquired deafness
Good = infants can benefit for acquisition, provide Deaf with auditory signals
Bad = some don’t want to be fixed, what’s wrong with being deaf, don’t know long term effects, invasive surgery, doesn’t work for everyone
Deaf children and hearing parents
- L1 likely to be oralism
- no speech input = no typical output
- Impoverished, frustrated
- Better with oral-manual input
- Parents often worry child won’t speak or will stop speaking if they sign
- Parents my oppose sign and won’t learn it
