Hearing Impairment

When I was a child in preschool, I was diagnosed with hearing loss. Everyone knows that a child develops a language and communicate by mimicking their parents and people surrounding them from what they hear and see. If hearing loss isn’t treated, the child could later on develop speech problems, academic difficulties, or even social issues. As for myself, many of those things have come to pass. I acquired a hearing problem early in my preschool days.

Being hard of hearing, or deaf, is a common disability. Rarely is a person completely deaf, and a hearing loss could fall anywhere from being completely deaf to hearing. The amount of functional hearing varies greatly from person to person. While it may seem that being completely deaf is the only hearing disability, any sort of hearing loss is seen as impairment. A simple daily task such as communication becomes difficult when one’s hearing is lost. For the most part, English is an oral and aural language supposed to be spoken and heard. Therefore, it is quite challenging to learn and understand English when you

Having a hearing impairment means that you have the impotence to assimilate what others around you are saying. The loss of hearing and its severity comes in many different levels. In more severe cases of deafness, like in Jacobs’ case, a hearing aid gives very little to no help at all. Jacobs’ disability brought him many challenges. In school he

In Alice-Ann Darrow’s article “Teaching Students with Hearing Losses” she states that it can be difficult to involve students with hearing losses in the music classroom and in the regular classroom as well. There are a numerous amount of students with hearing losses ranging from the ages of six to twenty-one. About 71,000 of special education students struggle with a hearing loss. A majority of students go without knowing that they have a hearing problem. Although most people believe that a person must be good at hearing in order to be musical, it is stated to be not true. The music classroom is actually a great place for students to practice good listening skills. Since listening is a mental process and hearing is a physical. Objectives for hard at hearing students should include listening to music, singing, playing instruments, moving to music, creating music and reading music. Music should be presented to the student’s strength and preferences. It is also helpful to have students feel stereo speakers or instruments as well as the use of kinesthetic movements. Alice-Ann Darrow believes that involving students with hearing losses into the music class room can be difficult but in the long run beneficial to the student.

The Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHOH) are understudied population and disproportionately impacted by cardiovascular diseases (CVD) due communication barriers (Mckee, Mckee, Winters, Sutter, & Pearson, 2014; McKee & Paasche-Orlow, 2012; Strong & Prinz, 1997). In considering the link between communication barriers and CVD attribute to insufficient English proficiency, inability to comprehend physicians’ spoken and written instructions, and inability to access community-based health outreach education programs in which all these surface factors increases the chance of DHOH developing CVD (McKee et al., 2011; Margellos-Anast, Estarziau, & Kaufman, 2006). The barriers that restrict access to health information suggest that

Getting parents involved is essential to supporting the development of a child with hearing loss. Counselling parents on the type and degree of hearing loss their child has and the effects of hearing loss is important. It is important to not focus solely on what the child cannot hear but also what the child can hear. Parents will need a lot of support in the beginning and it is my job as an audiologist to provide information and my professional advice. The goal is to help parents make the choices that are right for them and create positive outcomes for the child. It is necessary for parents to understand the benefit of amplification or intervention services so that everyone involved is working towards a common goal. Parents should also be knowledgeable of the services available to them and be prepared to advocate for their child. The school system provides supports for children with hearing loss and parents need to know how to obtain the services for their child. The audiologist can act as a resource for parents at any point as the child develops there will be new challenges. There is a partnership between the parent and the audiologist based on trust and a mutual understanding to provide the best care for the

Behaviors of children who suffer from Auditory Processing Disorder may have trouble listening, following directions, distracted by background noises, poor organization of verbal material, oral and written expression problems, remembering what they hear, and learning to read. If parents think that their child may have APD, they should seek help to an Audiologist. An Audiologist is a doctor who diagnose and treats hearing and balance problems. They are trained to diagnose, manage and treat hearing or balance problems for individuals from birth through adulthood. The Audiologist will perform several tests on the child to determine if the child may have APD or not. There are four types of tests, Hearing, Neurologic, Behavioral, and Dichotic.

There is little research done about children who are deaf or hard of hearing that coincides with autism spectrum disorder. Deaf children with autism are rare, but we do not hear very much about them even though deaf children carry an autism diagnosis (1-59) than in the general population (1-91) (Szymanski, 2012). Teachers who are certified in special education often see students with autism, however, when a student who is deaf with autism, are not sure what intervention they would need to work with the student.

Conductive hearing loss is from one or more deformity with the outer, inner, or middle ear which impacts sound from transferring to the nerves 5. Conductive hearing loss is often corrected with surgery, drugs, or hearing aids. Sensorineural hearing loss affects the cochlea, which transfers the sounds vibrations to the nerves 5. Although hearing aids are typically used for conductive hearing loss, a profoundly deaf sensorineural patient needs to complete a 6-month trial with them before they are considered ineffective and referred on for further testing for cochlear implant candidacy 5. Sensorineural hearing loss is primarily due to a malfunctioning cochlea so doctors run a hearing test to see how many decibels can be picked up by the cochlea. For pediatric patients to qualify for implants they need to be considered profoundly deaf in both ears. The tone threshold for mild hearing loss is between 21 and 40 dBHL (decibels Hearing Level) and profound hearing loss is greater than 90 dBHL 5. Typically, a pediatric patient looking for cochlear implants will go through a battery of speech-recognition testing while simultaneously undergoing the audiological

Without hearing screenings average diagnosis of permanent hearing loss is greater than 2 years old. Late diagnosis of hearing loss has been one of the contributing factors of reduced language skills in children (Durieux-Smith, Fitzpatrick, & Whittingham, 2008). Since the early 1980s, the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing has published recommendations and multiple position statements which support the use of newborn hearing screenings, to decrease the age of diagnosis of children with permanent hearing loss. By 2000, there was a federal law to support universal newborn hearing screenings (UNHS). The law also promoted early intervention for children with hearing loss, in hopes to improve speech/language abilities for children with hearing loss

Hearing loss is one of the most common physical conditions in the United States. It has been referred to as an invisible condition, as we can’t see it occurring; all we see is the effects of it (Hearing Loss Association of America). The severity of the loss can range in the classifications of mild, moderate, severe, or profound. It can also occur in just one ear, or both. Hearing loss can occur at any age. People can be born with deafness (which is known as congenital hearing loss), or lose their hearing over a gradual period of time. Causes of why hearing loss occurs vary per person. The most common cause of loss is noise and aging. Buildup in the air, injury, ear infection, rupture eardrum are other causes as well. For children who suffer from hearing loss, most are born with it.

Would you rather be able to hear or see? When we asked or class the votes were split pretty evenly. 40% said seeing and 40% said hearing. The other 20% were other.

Age is the most common factor in increasing hearing loss. About 30 percent of people between 65 and 74 experience some difficulty in hearing. That percentage and the severity of the loss increase with age.

Many individuals with dyslexia struggle remembering what they have heard and if a person has the problem of the inability to retain verbal information Payne and Turner, (1999, p. 136), then it is very important to have a hearing test Wood, (2011, p. 69). Where the result of the test is normal then it is more likely to be a kind of dyslexia named Auditory Processing Deficit. A considerable number of experts in the field of dyslexia agree that auditory processing deficit has direct impact on dyslexia, for example, Chivers, (2006, p. 37) mentioned that a lot of children with dyslexia have auditory processing troubles where she based in her argument on Tomatis’s test for hearing ( a test where a device called Electronic Ear was used). Likewise,

Age: As we get older, nerve cells inside the ear either get damaged or die, diminishing our ability to hear. About a third of people ages 65-74 suffer from age-related hearing loss. The ratio becomes one in every two seniors once they are 75 or older. It’s also