AIOU Solved Assignments code 681Autumn & Spring 2024 Assignment 1& 2 Course: Psychology of Deafness and Child Development (681) Spring 2024. AIOU past papers
ASSIGNMENT No: 1& 2
Psychology of Deafness and Child Development(681) Semester
Autumn & Spring 2024
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 681 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q.1 Discuss language acquisition. How type and degree of hearing loss make difference in the language acquisition of hearing impaired children.
Children will come up with the most extraordinary things when they start using language. Cute things, hilarious things and, sometimes, baffling things that may start us wondering whether we should worry about their language development. This article summarizes some of the knowledge we have about typical child language acquisition, that is, what you, as a caregiver, need not worry about. The last sections give a few pointers about when to seek professional help concerning your child’s language development and about resources on language acquisition. These resources (and this FAQ) deal with monolingual language acquisition. For multilingual language acquisition, please refer to the Ask-a-Linguist FAQs on Bilingual and Multilingual Children. All children acquire language in the same way, regardless of what language they use or the number of languages they use. Acquiring a language is like learning to play a game. Children must learn the rules of the language game, for example how to articulate words and how to put them together in ways that are acceptable to the people around them. In order to understand child language acquisition, we need to keep two very important things in mind: First, children do not use language like adults, because children are not adults. Acquiring language is a gradual, lengthy process, and one that involves a lot of apparent ‘errors’. We will see below that these ‘errors’ are in fact not errors at all, but a necessary part of the process of language acquisition. That is, they shouldn’t be corrected, because they will disappear in time. Second, children will learn to speak the dialect(s) and language(s) that are used around them. Children usually begin by speaking like their parents or caregivers, but once they start to mix with other children (especially from the age of about 3 years) they start to speak like friends their own age. You cannot control the way your children speak: they will develop their own accents and they will learn the languages they think they need. If you don’t like the local accent, you’ll either have to put up with it or move to somewhere with an accent you like! On the other hand, if you don’t like your own accent, and prefer the local one, you will be happy. A child will also learn the local grammar: ‘He done it’; ‘She never go there’; ‘My brother happy’ and so on are all examples of non-standard grammar found in some places where English is spoken. These might be judged wrong in school contexts (and all children will have to learn the standard version in school) but if adults in the child’s community use them, they are not “wrong” in child language. These examples show that different dialects of English have their own rules. The same is of course true of other languages and their own dialects. In what follows, examples are in English, because that is the language in which this article is written, although the child strategies illustrated in the examples apply to any language and to any combination of languages that your child may be learning. We start with a number of observations about child learning in general, about speech and language, and about how children themselves show us how they learn, before turning to children’s acquisitional strategies. These also teach us that children follow their own rules, and that they need plenty of time to sort these rules out.
Speech and language are two quite different things. Speech is a physical ability, whereas language is an intellectual one. The difference between children’s language abilities and speech abilities becomes clear from a classic illustration, reported by researchers Jean Berko-Gleason and Roger Brown in 1960. One parent imitates the child’s developing pronunciation of the word fish as ‘fis’ and asks the child: Is this your ‘fis’? To which the child responds: No! It’s my ‘fis’! The child recognizes that the pronunciation ‘fis’ is not up to par, but cannot reproduce the adult target ‘fish’. That is, the language item fish, complete with target pronunciation, is clear to the child, but speech production doesn’t match this awareness. Children of deaf parents give us further proof of the difference between these two abilities: if these children are exposed to a sign language early in life, they will develop that language whether they are deaf or hearing, even though they might not use it. The ‘fis-phenomenon’ is what explains why children can get very angry at someone who repeats their own baby productions back to them, whether in pronunciation or in grammar. Since speech and language are independent abilities, emerging language does not reflect emerging speech in any straightforward way, or vice versa. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with someone’s language abilities if they stutter, lisp or slur their words together, but these features of their speech may need correcting if they impair intelligibility beyond childhood. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with someone’s speech if they can’t say She sells seashells on the seashore by age 6, although their language ability may need checking if they don’t understand what this sentence means, in any language, at the same age. What speech and language development have in common is that they progress through stages and that their progress takes time. In speech, it is quite normal for English-speaking children, for example, to have difficulties pronouncing the sounds at the beginning of words like thank and then throughout their first 8 to 10 years: the precise coordination of the many different muscles involved in pronouncing any speech sound needs a lot of practice. In language, it is also normal that children have serious trouble throughout many years, for example sorting out the use of pronouns like I vs. you (if people say I of themselves and you to everyone else, what can these words mean??) or following complex instructions (which involve several clauses in one same sentence): children well into their early school years may not have acquired the meaning of words like or, before, after, or the cognitive ability to process complex sentences yet. As with the ‘fis-phenomenon’, in many cases these (typically temporary) child production problems are recognized as such by the child, who can simultaneously understand an adult using the correctly pronounced words in complete utterances. The child chooses to use other forms of expression, or to omit certain forms, so as to avoid using what they know will be badly produced. Some children will take longer than others to sort out some speech or language issue, or will have difficulties in areas which other children will have a breeze sailing through — even among siblings, including identical twins. These observations teach us to respect children’s learning in two complementary ways: the time it takes, and the individuality of each child’s learning.
Respecting children means learning to understand them. Your child is not you. Children will develop their own strategies for learning whatever they find relevant to learn around them, including language. Children are much more resourceful, resilient and creative than we are often prepared to give them credit for. Besides, and probably most importantly, your worries will reflect on your child. Children are very good at picking up distress signals from adults, and if they learn to associate your worry with their speech, then you may start having a real problem on your hands. Children have no idea that ‘language’ is something that adults worry about for its own sake. Language is just a tool that gets things done for them: it’s much more effective for a child to ask daddy for a toy that is out of reach than to simply shout in anger because they can’t grab it. So let your children experiment with their language(s), their way. They will find the right ways to make language work for them, just as you yourself did when you were growing up. There is nothing to worry about if your child doesn’t sound like an adult (which children don’t anyway) or like your friend’s child or like the ‘prodigy’ children you may hear about through the media. There may be reason to worry only if your children don’t sound like themselves. No one knows this better than you, because no one knows a child better than a caregiver. Your children have no idea what is ‘expected’ of them either. Namely, that you may be looking for things that are there, or not, in their language. The truth is that many of us caregivers forget to look for what is there, in our children’s language(s), and tend to focus on what we think is missing instead. A lot of people believe that only ‘grammatical’ language is language, with lots of words and lots of syntactic sophistication. Language is much more than this: your child may prefer to be expressive through intonation, for example, the melody of speech without which no language makes sense. Or may rely on invented words, complemented by expressive body language. Children know that there is a model around them that they must learn to follow. But they don’t know what the model looks like, so they approach it by trial and error. Let’s see how they do this, with a few examples.
The basic insight that we gain from children’s developing pronunciation is that there are difficult sounds and easy sounds, and difficult and easy distinctions between sounds. We can tell which are which by looking at what children do, because children cannot articulate what their vocal tracts are not developed enough to tackle yet. We can for example safely conclude that, for the ‘fis-phenomenon’ child above, the sound at the end of the word fish is more difficult than the sound at the end of the word fis. Children start using speech sounds when they start babbling. The sounds that they use in babbling are easy sounds and these will be the sounds children will use in their first utterances too. Children usually replace difficult sounds with sounds that are easier for them to articulate, or they may drop difficult sounds altogether. They may call Sam ‘Tam’, for example, and they may want to ‘pee’ potatoes with a potato-‘peewah’, or ask you why strawberries are ‘wed’ and not ‘boo’. Although sounds tend to be acquired in the same order across languages, we should keep in mind that different children may find different sounds easier or more difficult: each child will have their own individual learning strategies. The important thing is that there is progress in their development. Children’s spontaneous play also shows a progression from gross to sophisticated control over their body: they usually start by hitting toys, and hitting things with toys, because it’s easier to do this whilst fine motor skills have yet to be acquired. This is also why in virtually all languages the baby-words for ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ sound very similar. It’s not that the children ‘know’ the words for mum and dad, it’s simply that these are the kinds of words that children can say (they say them to us, to the cat, to their toys, to themselves), but parents decided to believe that the children are calling them ‘by name’, and so reinforced the children’s use of these words to them from time immemorial! Vowels (the sounds usually spelt a, e, i, o, u in English) are easier than consonants and are generally learned first. This is because vowels are the sounds that carry, and that we therefore perceive most clearly. If you want to shout for someone named Eve or Archibald you prolong the vowels in their names, not the consonants. So children are likely to go through some stage where all or most vowels are target-like in their speech, but all or most consonants may still be funny. Since consonants are no piece of cake for developing mouths, it becomes clear that words containing several consonants in a row are young children’s worst nightmare. English is particularly child-unfriendly, in that it has words like splash, with three consonants at the beginning, or like texts, with four at the end (the letter x represents two sounds, ‘k’ and’s’). If your child is bilingual in a tricky language like English and a straightforward one like Hawai’ian, where only single consonants are allowed before vowels, you shouldn’t be surprised if she sounds right in Hawai’ian much earlier than in English. Or if a proud Hawai’ian parent tells you that his monolingual children started ‘speaking much earlier’ than all the English monolingual children he knows. It’s the languages’ fault, not the children’s. The insights that we gain from cross-linguistic observations like these, by the way, especially among multilingual children, teach us that using what children do in one single language as the benchmark for typical language development across the board is very short-sighted indeed. This same strategy also accounts for why children leave out certain words and not others in their utterances. They may say things like ‘Mummy big glass table’ but not ‘my on if the’. These are two quite different types of words, the former being more salient to children because they carry stress in connected speech, and therefore much easier to perceive and produce.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 681 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q.2 Discuss the different patterns of linguistic development of hearing impaired children. Also compare it with language development of normal children language.
One of the most contentious and important issues in the education of deaf children concerns the nature of the medium that should be used. The argument is whether the language of the hearing society should be used (Oralism) or a visual manual language together with speech (Total Communication or bilingualism). Recently Conrad [6,7] has claimed that the exclusive use of Oral methods fails to provide the deaf child’s brain with sufficient linguistic information at an early enough age and so runs the risk of obstructing neurological growth so that functional atrophy may occur. In this situation Conrad argues ‘we should not ignore the possibility that the “functional atrophy” … may come to involve structural atrophy as well.’ He concludes that Oral schools “virtually are cognitively destroying deaf children.”
Conrad’s case rests on his interpretation of 3 kinds of circumstantial evidence. These are animal studies of auditory deprivation, hemispheric lateralization studies of deaf and hearing subjects, and finally his own data. In the present paper each of these 3 kinds of evidence is reviewed and alternative interpretations are advanced against Conrad’s hypothesis of functional atrophy. It is argued that the case that Oralism is responsible for brain atrophy is not proven. It is concluded that the main problem facing deaf children and their teachers is deafness itself, and not any particular educational philosophy and group of methods such as Oralism. Parents of young deaf children will express different views on how and when their deaf child will begin to learn to read and write. When Ruth Swanwick and I investigated the views and actions of parents in 2007 we found a wide range of opinions and practices, from those who felt that teaching deaf children to read and write was best left to the professionals once the child started school, to those who were concerned about the debate on the teaching of phonics and wanted to start to teach their child initial letter sounds from a young age. Teachers of the Deaf can also hold different opinions, which will influence what they say when discussing the topic with parents. At first this might seem like a challenge, but it actually reflects the broad range of knowledge, skills and understanding that we all bring to the literacy process, sometimes referred to as ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ or ‘inside out’ and ‘outside in’ processes. When speaking to parents I often refer to the ‘big picture’ and the ‘little picture’ and explain the need to foster both aspects and the important role for parents. By the ‘big picture’ I mean general language knowledge and understanding of the world, as well as story structure. While it is of course true that literacy can support the development of deaf children’s language, for those in the early stages of learning it is easiest if their literacy learning builds on language that they already know and understand. Thus deaf children with well-developed language will have an advantage in beginning literacy. The link between language and literacy merits discussion, so that parents appreciate that the work they are putting in to supporting their deaf child’s language development is important for literacy development as well. Vocabulary is one aspect that deserves particular stress. Parents may be encouraged to promote their child’s general vocabulary, for example by using alternative words and ensuring that they do not limit their own vocabulary use to words that they know are familiar to their child. Vocabulary that is specific to stories, for example ‘Once upon a time…’, is also going to be useful to children when they begin to read for themselves. In our study mentioned above, Ruth and I found that parents who were deaf themselves were particularly good at fostering this kind of language and vocabulary and saw the importance of ensuring that their deaf children learnt about stories and storytelling, providing them with a base on which to build. The second aspect, or the ‘little picture’, refers to the engagement with the text. In respect to books, this involves factors like finding the front of the book and following the way that text, in English, flows from left to right and then to the line below, again left to right. Recognising that the words tell the story and the pictures are complementary, and seeing the importance of both the words and the spaces between the words are all helpful features for children to grasp, and come from sharing books with adults and discussing particular features. This can include some early letter recognition and letter-sound correspondence. We found that hearing parents of deaf children were particularly good at these text-based skills. In any discussion with parents of young deaf children about reading and writing, it can be useful to ensure that as Teachers of the Deaf we hold a broad view of what constitutes literacy. This will enable us to observe individual parents of deaf children engaging in literacy activities with their child and discuss with them what they are already doing to support their child’s reading and writing and other practices that they might include. Some of the textbased skills can be easy for deaf children to grasp and can form part of a discussion with parents around what their child already knows in relation to beginning to read, which can be encouraging. If we broaden our discussion to conceptualise literacy as interpreting symbols, then the link between reading, writing and early numeracy becomes clearer. Parents are often inclined to count with young children, deaf as well as hearing, but may not have the knowledge or confidence to go beyond that. One reason why older deaf children can lag behind in numeracy relates to the vocabulary that is used, and again parents can be encouraged to introduce some of the specific vocabulary, for example words like add/subtract/minus/fewer, and also less obvious vocabulary like the fact that ‘table’ can refer to a chart as well as an item of furniture. While parents are often eager to encourage young children, deaf or hearing, to share books with them, and to discuss the books, young children’s first attempts at writing are not always afforded the same attention or given the same encouragement. This is a pity because, as with learning about books, so young children can show that they have the beginnings of understanding about writing – what print looks like, how letters (or letter-like shapes) are grouped into ‘words’ and the difference between letters and numbers. These features can be brought out from a child’s early writing and used to promote further understanding. Although I have discussed the need to hold a broad view of literacy, I may have given the impression that for young deaf children learning to read and write relates to interactions with books or pencil and paper activities. It is true that much research to date has indeed focused on the way in which parents and young deaf children interact around books. One reason for this may be that it is the easiest situation to record and analyse, but an unintended negative consequence may be that parents gain the impression that this type of literacy activity is more highly regarded than other forms, when in reality there are other ways in which parents of deaf children may engage with literacy which may be better suited to some families. With Margaret Brown and other colleagues from the University of Melbourne and Taralye Early Intervention Centre, I am currently investigating three types of literacy activity that parents might engage in themselves and with their young deaf children. The first type, which we term ‘traditional literacy’, refers to reading and sharing books, the type of literacy activity to which I was referring above. The second, ‘environmental literacy’, encourages parents to consider literacy that they encounter in their everyday life, including reading notices and road signs, following recipes, writing lists, consulting TV schedules and reading magazines or catalogues. Some children engage very readily with the many attractive and colourful magazines for children that are currently on the market. The third category (‘new technology’) refers to any activity on a computer or mobile phone that involves print, for example text messages, emails, searching for information and playing games. We have already looked at the richness that three cohorts of parents of hearing children provide for their children when they are aged four, and in due course we will be able to see whether this correlates with these children’s own literacy development at the age of six. We are currently exploring whether parents of deaf children of a similar age provide them with an equally rich literacy environment. By using the same questionnaire developed for parents of hearing children and adding some further questions, we are exploring whether/how they think that their children’s deafness will affect the way that they learn to read and write. We will be pleased if we find that these young deaf children are being provided with the same rich diet of literacy activities as their hearing peers, both in terms of watching their parents and also of being actively engaged themselves. We are keen to explore ways in which their home literacy environment can assist deaf children with their own literacy learning. There are many ways in which young deaf children can begin to engage in literacy activities, and as parents and Teachers of the Deaf we can exploit them all for the benefit of deaf children. Parents, who know their deaf child best, may be able to help Teachers of the Deaf to find a route into literacy for their child. Maybe as professionals we need to check that we are using every resource available to us, including fully engaging with parents, viewing their knowledge of their child as complementary to our professional knowledge of the process of learning to read, write and be numerate.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 681 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q.3 Discuss the problems of ascertaining cognitive development in children who have limited receptive and expressive language skills. Support your answer with examples of different activities.
Developmental difficulties rarely occur in isolation. A close relationship between the development of Inattention/Hyperactivity (IH) symptoms and language skills has been consistently reported. Cross-sectional studies found that children with ADHD have an increased prevalence of language impairments. Several difficulties in linguistic skills have been reported among children with ADHD, particularly with regards to expressive language skills: phonology, vocabulary, syntax and pragmatic. Although data on this are somewhat inconsistent, children with ADHD may also have deficits in receptive language skills. However, in longitudinal studies the association between early IH symptoms with later language skills has been found to be weak or absent. Several authors have suggested that language difficulties could precede the development of ADHD and represent an early expression of the disorder.
Conversely, cross sectional studies found that children with language impairments have an elevated prevalence of ADHD as well as deficits in selective attention tasks, in particular in the auditory modality. Longitudinal studies have reported that early language difficulties are associated with later IH symptoms during the preschool and school periods even when prior levels of IH symptoms are accounted for. Recent results of longitudinal studies support a causal role of language difficulties in the development of IH symptoms . Difficulties in language skills may be associated with ineffective use of self-directed speech for self-regulation, which may subsequently lead to IH symptoms (Hypothesis 1). Following 120 children at 30, 36, and 42 months of age, Petersen et al. reported that the relationship between early language skills and later IH symptoms was mediated by language-based self-regulation during the preschool period. This result suggests that language functions (i.e., private or inner speech) may support behavioral and attentional control. Nevertheless, two other hypotheses for the association between early language skills and later IH symptoms have been proposed. The link between language skills and behavioral problems may be mediated by interpersonal difficulties (Hypothesis 2) , as poor language skills may interfere with socialization which may then lead to IH symptoms. Like all neurodevelopmental disorders, language disorders and ADHD are known to share some etiological factors (such as genetic or pre- and postnatal environmental factors). A last hypothesis is that the common vulnerability has a sequential expression during the development by impacting first on language skills and later on behavior (Hypothesis 3), creating the illusion of a directional effect between early language skills and later ADHD symptoms (i.e., heterotypic continuity).
Rather surprisingly, few of the previous studies have examined which aspects of early language skills are most strongly associated with the development of IH symptoms. Snowling et al. reported that children’s expressive language impairment at 5.5 years was the language profile most strongly associated with ADHD in adolescence. Researchers have called for more longitudinal studies to explore the association between language difficulties and IH symptoms and specify the underlying developmental processes.
The preschool years are a crucial period in children’s psychological development. Previous studies support a significant instability of language skills between 3 and 5.5 years. For some children, the onset of behavioral, emotional and/or social problems occurs during this period. Addressing the stated research questions in preschoolers rather than in older children is of utmost importance since influences with respect to long-lasting outcomes may be more determinant during the first years of life, as suggested by the Developmental Origin of Health and Disease Hypothesis
In the present study, we use data from a large (N = 1459) prospective mother-child cohort to test bidirectional relationships between children’s language skills and inattention/hyperactivity (IH) symptoms between 3 and 5.5 years. We expect to replicate previous longitudinal studies, which found an asymmetrical association between language skills and IH symptoms during the preschool period (i.e., the association between language skills and IH symptoms was stronger than the reverse). If the influence of early language difficulties on the development of IH symptoms is mediated by an ineffective use of self-directed speech, language tests tapping into expressive language skills should be most strongly associated with later IH symptoms (Hypothesis 1). Additionally, we also sought to test whether the association might be mediated by interpersonal difficulties (Hypothesis 2) and whether shared pre- and postnatal environmental factors might explain both language skills and IH symptoms (Hypothesis 3).We analyzed data from the EDEN prospective mother-child cohort study. The primary aim of the EDEN cohort was to identify prenatal and early postnatal nutritional, environmental and social determinants of children’s health and development. Pregnant women (< twenty-fourth weeks of amenorrhea) were recruited during a prenatal visit at the Obstetrics and Gynecology department of the French University Hospitals of Nancy and Poitiers. Exclusion criteria included a history of diabetes, twin pregnancies, intention to deliver outside the university hospital or to move out of the study region within the next 3 years, and inability to speak French. The participation rate among eligible women was 53 %. Enrolment started in February 2003 in Poitiers and in September 2003 in Nancy, lasted for 27 months in each center and resulted in the inclusion of 2002 pregnant women. Compared to the National Perinatal Survey (ENP) carried out among 14,482 women who delivered in France in 2003, women participating in the EDEN study had similar sociodemographic characteristics except for higher educational background (53.6 % had a high-school diploma versus 42.6 % in the ENP survey) and higher employment level (73.1 % were employed during pregnancy cohort versus 66.0 % in the ENP survey). The study was approved by the Ethical Research Committee (Comité consultatif de protection des personnes dans la recherche biomédicale) of Bicêtre Hospital and by the Data Protection Authority (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés). Informed written consents was obtained from parents for themselves at the time of enrollment and for the newborn after delivery.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 681 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q.4 Share your understanding on intelligence tests. How we can administer these tests on hearing impaired children? Also highlight the problems in administrating these tests. What do you suggest to overcome these problems?
Spoken communication is uniquely human. If the sense of hearing is damaged or absent, individuals with the loss are denied the opportunity to sample an important feature of their environment, the sounds emitted by nature and by humans themselves. People who are deaf or hard-of-hearing will have diminished enjoyment for music or the sound of a babbling brook. We recognize that some deaf and hard-of-hearing children are born to deaf parents who communicate through American Sign Language. Without hearing, these children have full access to the language of their home environment and that of the deaf community. However, the majority of deaf and hard-of-hearing children are born to hearing parents. For these families, having a child with hearing loss may be a devastating situation. The loss or reduction of the sense of hearing impairs children’s ability to hear speech and consequently to learn the intricacies of the spoken language of their environment. Hearing loss impairs their ability to produce and monitor their own speech and to learn the rules that govern the use of speech sounds (phonemes) in their native spoken language if they are born to hearing parents. Consequently, if appropriate early intervention does not occur within the first 6-12 months, hearing loss or deafness, even if mild, can be devastating to the development of spoken communication with hearing family and peers, to the development of sophisticated language use, and to many aspects of educational development, if environmental compensation does not occur.
Hearing loss can affect the development of children’s ability to engage in age-appropriate activities, their functional speech communication skills, and their language skills. Before we consider the effects of hearing loss on this development, we will review briefly the extensive literature on the development of speech and language in children with normal hearing. Although the ages at which certain development milestones occur may vary, the sequence in which they occur is usually constant (Menyuk, 1972).
This chapter discusses the nature of the emergence of communication skills in normally hearing children as well as the unique effects of early hearing loss and deafness on this process for infants and children. We give details of the special nature of assessments and rehabilitation strategies appropriate for infants and children with hearing loss and finally discuss how considerations for disability determination need to be tailored to the special needs of this population. Infants begin to differentiate among various sound intensities almost immediately after birth and, by 1 week of age, can make gross distinctions between tones. By 6 weeks of age, infants pay more attention to speech than to other sounds, discriminate between voiced and unvoiced speech sounds, and prefer female to male voices (Nober and Nober, 1977).
Infants begin to vocalize at birth, and those with normal hearing proceed through the stages of pleasure sounds, vocal play, and babbling until the first meaningful words begin to occur at or soon after 1 year of age (Bangs, 1968; Menyuk, 1972; Quigley and Paul, 1984; Stark, 1983). Speech-like stress patterns begin to emerge during the babbling stages (Stark, 1983), along with pitch and intonational contours (Bangs, 1968; Quigley and Paul, 1984; Stark, 1983).
According to Templin (1957), most children (75 percent) can produce all the vowel sounds and diphthongs by 3 years of age; by 7 years of age, 75 percent of children are able to produce all the phonemes, with the exception of “r.” Consonant blends are usually mastered by 8 years of age, and overall speech production ability is generally adult-like by that time (Menyuk, 1972; Quigley and Paul, 1984).
A review of speech and language development in children with hearing loss is complicated by the heterogeneity of childhood hearing loss, such as differences in age at onset and in degree of loss; we review these complicating factors separately following a more general overview. Mental and physical incapacities (mental retardation, cerebral palsy, etc.) may also coexist with hearing loss. Approximately 25-33 percent of children with hearing loss have multiple potentially disabling conditions (Holden-Pitt and Diaz, 1998; McCracken, 1994; Moeller, Coufal, and Hixson, 1990). In addition, independent learning disabilities and language disabilities due to cognitive or linguistic disorders not directly associated with hearing loss may coexist (Mauk and Mauk, 1992; Sikora and Plapinger, 1994; Wolgemuth, Kamhi, and Lee, 1998). For example, Holden-Pitt and Diaz (1998) reported the following incidences of additional impairments in a group of children with some degree of hearing loss:
- blind/uncorrected vision problem (4 percent),
- emotional/behavioral problem (4 percent),
- mental retardation (8 percent), and
- learning disability (9 percent).
The coexistence of other disabilities with hearing impairment may impact the way in which sensory aids are fitted or the benefit that children receive from them (Tharpe, Fino-Szumski, and Bess, 2001). A recent technical report from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association stated that pediatric cochlear implant recipients with multiple impairments often demonstrate delayed or reduced communication gains compared with their peers with hearing loss alone (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2004).
In this chapter, we focus on speech and language development in children with prelingual onset of hearing loss (before 2 years of age) without comorbidity. However, it should be kept in mind that the presence of multiple handicapping conditions may place a child at greater risk for the development of communication or emotional disorders (Cantwell, as summarized by Prizant et al., 1990). In addition, these children may require adaptations to standard testing routines to accommodate their individual capacities.
Natural acquisition of speech and spoken language is not often seen in individuals with profound hearing loss unless appropriate intervention is initiated early. One of the primary goals in fitting deaf or hard-of-hearing children with auditory prostheses (hearing aid or cochlear implant) is to improve the ease and the extent to which they can access and acquire speech and spoken language. It should be kept in mind that the children under discussion typically are not born to deaf parents; those children may acquire American Sign Language as their native language.
Speech and voice characteristics of persons who are deaf or hard-of-hearing are generally acknowledged to differ significantly from those of individuals with normal hearing (Abberton and Fourcin, 1975; Hood and Dixon, 1969; Monsen, 1974, 1978, 1983b; Monsen and Engebretson, 1977; Monsen, Engebretson, and Vemula, 1978, 1979; Nickerson, 1975; Nober and Nober, 1977; Stark, 1983; Wirz, Subtelny, and Whitehead, 1981). A congenital or prelingually acquired hearing loss reduces the intelligibility of talkers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and impairs the production and tonal aspects of their speech (John and Howarth, 1965; Markides, 1970; McGarr and Osberger, 1978; Monsen, 1979; Osberger and Levitt, 1979; Smith, 1975).
Difficulties with speech sound production include problems with the articulation of vowels and consonants, such as substitutions, distortions, and omissions (Hudgins and Numbers, 1942; Zimmerman and Rettaliata, 1981); excessive use of a neutral vowel, such as schwa the unstressed vowel sound in the second syllable of the word “kitten” (Markides, 1970); lack of adequate differentiation between various vowels (Angelocci, Kopp, and Holbrook, 1964; Levitt and Stromberg, 1983); and failure to differentiate between voiced and voiceless consonant sounds, for example “b” and “p” (Calvert, 1962; Monsen, 1976; White-
head, 1983). These problems are accompanied by a significantly slowed rate of general speech sound awareness (phonological development) in children with hearing loss (Subtelny, 1983). Although many talkers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can correctly produce phonemes in isolation, they may still be unable to smoothly combine the phonemes in connected speech. Thus, reduced speech intelligibility can result.
Vocabulary knowledge in children with hearing loss may be age appropriate or reduced, with results showing large variability (Gilbertson and Kamhi, 1995; Seyfried and Kricos, 1996; Yoshinaga-Itano, 1994). In general, however, the rate of vocabulary growth is slowed, and may plateau prematurely (Briscoe, Bishop, and Norbury, 2001; Carney and Moeller, 1998; Davis, 1974; Davis, Elfenbein, Schum, and Bentler, 1986; Moeller, Osberger, and Eccarius, 1986). Word entries may have less breadth or flexibility of meaning (Moeller et al., 1986; Yoshinaga-Itano, 1994). In particular, nonliteral or abstract word usage may be impoverished. The dynamic time course of accessing the meanings of words may also be slowed (slowed lexical retrieval) in children with hearing loss, although again, large unpredictable variability among individuals occurs (Jerger, Lai, and Marchman, 2002). In concert with vocabulary development, grammatical knowledge is also reduced in children with hearing loss.
For example, in a sentence construction task, 14-year-old children who were deaf or hard-of-hearing performed similarly to 6- to 8-year-old children with normal hearing (Templin, 1966). In spoken language samples, the sentences of children who were deaf or hard-of-hearing were of shorter lengths with simpler sentence constructions and syntax (Brannon and Murray, 1966; Seyfried and Kricos, 1996). Sentences in the passive voice were not successfully comprehended or produced by about half of 17- to 18-year-old children who were deaf or hard-of-hearing (Power and Quigley, 1973). In studies of the morphological rules for different types of suffixes (e.g., -s as in sings and -er as in singer), children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing generally show inferior performance (Bunch and Clarke, 1978; Cooper, 1967; Elfenbein, Hardin-Jones, and Davis, 1994). The extent to which specific language skills are delayed versus deviant in the presence of childhood hearing loss continues to be pursued. It should also be noted that language proficiency is a strong predictor of reading achievement (Carney and Moeller, 1998). Thus, age-appropriate literacy skills typically are not observed in children with hearing loss and language problems.
AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 681 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q.5 Discuss the link between perception and short term memory. How a teacher of deaf can improve the perceptual skills of hearing impaired children to improve the short and long term memory?
Memory Encoding is the crucial first step to creating a new memory. It allows the perceived item of interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain, and then recalled later from short-term or long-term memory.
Encoding is a biological event beginning with perception through the senses. The process of laying down a memory begins with attention (regulated by the thalamus and the frontal lobe), in which a memorable event causes neurons to fire more frequently, making the experience more intense and increasing the likelihood that the event is encoded as a memory. Emotion tends to increase attention, and the emotional element of an event is processed on an unconscious pathway in the brain leading to the amygdala. Only then are the actual sensations derived from an event processed.
The perceived sensations are decoded in the various sensory areas of the cortex and then combined in the brain’s hippocampus into one single experience. The hippocampus is then responsible for analyzing these inputs and ultimately deciding if they will be committed to long-term memory. It acts as a kind of sorting centre where the new sensations are compared and associated with previously recorded ones. The various threads of information are then stored in various different parts of the brain, although the exact way in which these pieces are identified and recalled later remains largely unknown. The key role that the hippocampus plays in memory encoding has been highlighted by examples of individuals who have had their hippocampus damaged or removed and can no longer create new memories (see Anterograde Amnesia). It is also one of the few areas of the brain where completely new neurons can grow.
Although the exact mechanism is not completely understood, the encoding occurs on different levels, the first step is the formation of short-term memory from the ultra-short-term sensory memory, followed by the conversion to along-term memory by a process of memory consolidation. The process begins with the creation of a memory trace or engram in response to the external stimuli. An engram is a hypothetical biophysical or biochemical change in the neurons of the brain, hypothetical in the respect that no-one has ever actually seen, or even proved the existence of, such a construct. When presented with a visual stimulus, the part of the brain which is activated the most depends on the nature of the image. A blurred image, for example, activates the visual cortex at the back of the brain most. An image of an unknown face activates the associative and frontal regions most. An image of a face which is already in working memory activates the frontal regions most, while the visual areas are scarcely stimulated at all.
- Acoustic encoding is the processing and encoding of sound, words and other auditory input for storage and later retrieval. This is aided by the concept of the phonological loop, which allows input within our echoic memory to be sub-vocally rehearsed in order to facilitate remembering.
- Visual encoding is the process of encoding images and visual sensory information. Visual sensory information is temporarily stored within the iconic memory before being encoded into long-term storage. The amygdala (within the medial temporal lobe of the brain which has a primary role in the processing of emotional reactions) fulfils an important role in visual encoding, as it accepts visual input in addition to input from other systems and encodes the positive or negative values of conditioned stimuli.
- Tactile encoding is the encoding of how something feels, normally through the sense of touch. Physiologically, neurons in the primary somatosensory cortex of the brain react to vibrotactile stimuli caused by the feel of an object.
- Semantic encoding is the process of encoding sensory input that has particular meaning or can be applied to a particular context, rather than deriving from a particular sense.
It is believed that, in general, encoding for short-term memory storage in the brain relies primarily on acoustic encoding, while encoding for long-term storage is more reliant (although not exclusively) on semantic encoding.
Human memory is fundamentally associative, meaning that a new piece of information is remembered better if it can be associated with previously acquired knowledge that is already firmly anchored in memory. The more personally meaningful the association, the more effective the encoding and consolidation. Elaborate processing that emphasizes meaning and associations that are familiar tends to leads to improved recall. On the other hand, information that a person finds difficult to understand cannot be readily associated with already acquired knowledge, and so will usually be poorly remembered, and may even be remembered in a distorted form due to the effort to comprehend its meaning and associations. For example, given a list of words like “thread”, “sewing”, “haystack”, “sharp”, “point”, “syringe”, “pin”, “pierce”, “injection” and “knitting”, people often also (incorrectly) remember the word “needle” through a process of association.
Because of the associative nature of memory, encoding can be improved by a strategy of organization of memory called elaboration, in which new pieces of information are associated with other information already recorded in long-term memory, thus incorporating them into a broader, coherent narrative which is already familiar. An example of this kind of elaboration is the use of mnemonics, which are verbal, visual or auditory associations with other, easy-to-remember constructs, which can then be related back to the data that is to be remembered. Rhymes, acronyms, acrostics and codes can all be used in this way. Common examples are “Roy G. Biv” to remember the order of the colours of the rainbow, or “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” for the musical notes on the lines of the treble clef, which most people find easier to remember than the original list of colours or letters. When we use mnemonic devices, we are effectively passing facts through the hippocampus several times, so that it can keep strengthening the associations, and therefore improve the likelihood of subsequent memory recall. In past literature, visual illusions and false memories have been studied separately. After all, they seem qualitatively different: visual illusions are immediate, whereas false memories seemed to develop over an extended period of time. A surprising new study blurs the line between these two phenomena, however. The study, conducted by Helene Intraub and Christopher A. Dickinson, both of the University of Delaware, reveals an example of false memory occurring within 42 milliseconds—about half the amount of time it takes to blink your eye. Intraub and Dickinson’s study relied upon a phenomenon known as “boundary extension”, an example of false memory found when recalling pictures. When we see a picture of a location—say, a yard with a garbage can in front of a fence—we tend to remember the scene as though more of the fence were visible surrounding the garbage can. In other words, we extend the boundaries of the image, believing that we saw more fence than was actually present. This phenomenon is usually interpreted as a constructive memory error—our memory system extrapolates the view of the scene to a wider angle than was actually present. The new study, published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science, asked how quickly this boundary extension happens. The researchers showed subjects a picture, erased it for a very short period of time by overlaying a new image, and then showed a new picture that was either the same as the first image or a slightly zoomed-out view of the same place. They found that when people saw the exact same picture again, they thought the second picture was more zoomed-in than the first one they had seen. When they saw a slightly zoomed-out version of the picture they had seen before, however, they thought this picture matched the first one. This experience is the classic boundary extension effect. So what was the shocking part? The gap between the first and second picture was less than 1/20th of a second. In less than the blink of an eye, people remembered a systematically modified version of pictures they had seen. This modification is, by far, the fastest false memory ever found. Although it is still possible that boundary extension is purely a result of our memory system, the incredible speed of this phenomenon suggests a more parsimonious explanation: that boundary extension may in part be caused by the guesses of our visual system itself. The new dataset thus blurs the boundaries between the initial representation of a picture (via the visual system) and the storage of that picture in memory. So is boundary extension a visual illusion or a false memory? Perhaps these two phenomena are not as different as previously thought. False memories and visual illusions both occur quickly and easily, and both seem to rely on the same cognitive mechanism: the fundamental property of perception and memory to fill in gaps with educated guesses, information that seems most plausible given the context. The bottom line? The work of Intraub and colleagues adds to a growing movement that suggests that memory and perception may be simply two sides of the same coin.
