Sight Vs Hearing

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

A working description of deafblindness that has been accepted over many years, is that persons are regarded as deafblind if their combined sight and hearing impairment cause difficulties with communication. It can be found in all age groups including children but the greatest is in older people.

The majority of deaf students are born to hearing parents. Since 2002, new born hearing screening has been mandated in Ontario. This is usually done within the first four months of being born. If a child does have a hearing loss, immediate steps are taken to ensure the baby is given language. This reduces the chances of language delay and therefore, literacy delay when the child begins school. Before then, as in the time of Deafening, when Grania loses her hearing, there were no such mandates. Unfortunately, a child may have been be a toddler (or older) by the time their hearing loss was discovered.

Deafness can be the result of many different causes such as otitis media (middle ear infections), hereditary disorders, genetic mutations at birth, prenatal exposure to certain diseases such as meningitis, and trauma to the eardrum or auditory nerves. (Better Health Channel, 2013)

An average of 90% of all babies born deaf or with some type of hearing loss are born to hearing parents. Deafness can be caused by a variety of things both genetic and environmental. Upon learning their child is deaf, most hearing families try to find ways to fix what they feel is a defect. However, deaf families rejoice in their child's deafness because now they have another person to strengthen the deaf community and carry on the American Deaf culture.

Kleinman’s questions are more applicable to deaf people in general who are more in favor of and interested in improving their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implant, and/or speech therapy. Therefore, they would be more likely to answer his questions even though they do contain the term sickness as these people are more to likely view deafness as a disability compared to people who strictly identify themselves as a part of Deaf culture. Also, Kleinman’s questions can be especially applicable for hearing parents with deaf children who want to raise them as hearing children. According to the ninety percent rule, ninety-percent of deaf children have hearing parents and ninety-percent of hearing children have deaf parents (Sparrow 141). Since hearing parents want to raise their children in the hearing culture, it is ideal for them to be able to utilize Kleinman’s eight questions as a means of providing a way for their deaf children to improve their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implants, and/or speech

I was also born deaf and in most cases of deafness, the person is also mute,

Deafness can occur at any age. It can be brought on by unfortunate occurrences. This is a stereotype because people just assume that the Deaf Person was born with the disability and does not know any different. There are stereotypes that people are not able to dance because they can’t hear the music. This is a stereotype because it is thought by many people that this is a problem that Deaf People face. There are still able to dance just like anyone else is able to. It is also thought that they are not able to have fun with other people who are able to listen to music. Some people with hearing deficiency are still able to feel

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

When you look at someone that you have never met before, you don’t immediately assume that they are deaf, but so much of the population in the world are deaf. One in five hundred children in America are born without the ability to hear, and usually are born to parents that do have hearing. “Hearing loss in adults can either be inherited from your parents or acquired from illness, ototoxic (ear-damaging) drugs, exposure to loud noise, tumors, head injury, or the aging process. This loss may occur by itself or with tinnitus (ringing in the ears).” (ASHA). Fifteen percent of the american population over the of 18 have hearing problems that could last their entire life. This is some much of the population, and we don’t give it enough recognition.

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.

Blindness is a motif that readers see throughout King Lear in many characters such as Lear and Gloucester since they are unable to see the truth. Although blindness in the modern world is defined as not having sight, William Shakespeare tells readers that being able to see does not mean morally and spiritually you can see. Lear’s blindness causes him not to see the treachery behind Goneril and Regan at the beginning of the play which causes him to lose his throne and go mad near the end. Also Gloucester is also blind as he does not see the lies hidden behind the truths that Edmund tells him and later when Cornwall pulls out Gloucester’s eyes, Gloucester is able to see the truths and realizes that Edgar is the legitimate son. Shakespeare shows us throughout King Lear that seeing is more than just through our eyes. The play is centered on true visions and blindness.

In the article, Maintaining perceptual constancy while remaining vigilant: Left hemisphere change blindness and right hemisphere vigilance; says that there are significant amounts of writings that propose the dominances in the right hemisphere related to the predatory survival stimuli. On the other hand, there was a failure to discern apparent differences in the visual scene such as, looking at a picture with a tree, a bird, and a birdhouse, then given the same picture but one thing was missing like the bird and you didn’t notice, this would be called a silent change. Both right and left visual fields were studied, the left identified changes faster than the right, determining the right hemisphere had advantages in detecting change. This proposes

Younger people can develop hearing loss as well. Fourteen percent of people between the ages of 45 and 65, and another 8 million people between 18 and 44, suffer from some form of hearing impairment. A

I also want to briefly point out the range of hearing impairments that a child can have. Even though a child may not be classified as “profoundly impaired” or deaf, this does not mean that the child will not face several of the obstacles a deaf child does. Therefore, even though this site is taken from a “worse case scenario” perspective, many of the methods and therapy situations may apply to those with less severe impairments.