Learning Disability, Neuropsychology, and Deaf Youth

Historically, there have been a variety of perspectives regarding the impact of deafness on the development of intellect, learning, and brain organization in prelingually deaf children. In 1960, for example, Myklebust proposed that auditory or any odier sensory deprivation leads to limitations on deaf people's experience and thus deprives them of information critical for normal psychological functioning. In his view, the absence of sensation alters the integration of information and the functioning of other abilities, thus leading to a differently constituted experience. Such alterations' were seen as occurring naturally and unknowingly, affecting deaf people's perception, conception, imagination, and thought. Myklebust's perspective unfortunately was linked to a broader view of deaf people as not only different but also cognitively deficient relative to hearing people. In a large number of studies, deaf and hearing subjects were compared on measures designed for and normed on hearing populations without consideration of communication needs or the possible effects of early language deprivation in hearing households. While deaf people as a group often did score lower on such measures, there were multiple confounding factors that could have explained the differences without having to assume any inherent deficiencies in the deaf populations' intellectual or cognitive functioning (Greenberg & Kusche, 1989). Deaf people, in fact, have been

Audiology · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive skill · Developmental psychology · Hearing loss · Intellect · Neuropsychology · Perception · Perspective (graphical · Hearing Impairment and Communication · Psychology

• Recent Issues in the Use of Signed Language Assessments for Diagnosis of Language Disorders in Signing Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

  Open Access•Jonathan Henner, Rama Novogrodsky et al.•The Journal of Deaf Studies and…•2018

  Add to list