Prelingual deafness
Encyclopedia
A profoundly prelingually deaf individual is someone who was born with insufficient hearing to acquire speech normally, or who lost their hearing prior to the age at which speech is acquired.

Also called "Prelingual hearing impairment", it exists when the impairment is congenital or otherwise acquired before the individual has acquired speech and language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

, thus rendering the disadvantages more difficult to treat because the child is unable to access audible /spoken communication from the outset. Prelingual deaf children born into signing families have no delay in language development and communication. Most pre-lingual hearing impairment is due to an acquired condition, usually either disease or trauma; therefore, families commonly have no prior knowledge of deafness.

In children, this type of hearing loss can lead to social isolation for several reasons. First, the child experiences delayed social development that is in large part tied to delayed language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...

. It is also directly tied to their inability to pick up auditory social cues. This can result in a deaf person becoming generally irritable. A child who uses sign language, or identifies with the Deaf culture
Deaf culture
Deaf culture describes the social beliefs, behaviors, art, literary traditions, history, values and shared institutions of communities that are affected by deafness and which use sign languages as the main means of communication. When used as a cultural label, the word deaf is often written with a...

 does not generally experience this isolation, particularly if he/she attends a school for the deaf, but may conversely experience isolation from his parents if they do not know, or make an effort to learn sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...

. A child who is exclusively or predominantly oral (using speech for communication) can experience social isolation from his or her hearing peers, particularly if no one takes the time to explicitly teach them social skills that other children acquire independently by virtue of having normal hearing.

See also

  • Deafness
  • Deaf history
    Deaf history
    The history of deaf people and its culture makes up a bunch of deaf history. The deaf culture is an ethnocentric culture that is centered around signed language and relationships among one another. Unlike other cultures the Deaf culture is not associated with any native land as it is a global...

  • Hearing impairment
    Hearing impairment
    -Definition:Deafness is the inability for the ear to interpret certain or all frequencies of sound.-Environmental Situations:Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other ear defections...

  • List of notable deaf people
  • Models of deafness
    Models of deafness
    Various models of deafness are rooted in either the social or biological sciences. These are the medical model, the social model, and the cultural model. The model used can affect how deaf persons are treated and their identity. In the medical model, deafness is viewed as an undesirable...

  • The Language Instinct
    The Language Instinct
    The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...

  • The Butterflies of Zagorsk
    The Butterflies of Zagorsk
    The Butterflies of Zagorsk was a documentary produced by the BBC, narrated by Michael Dean, and first aired in the United Kingdom in 1990. It tells the story of the remarkable teaching methods for children at the deaf-blind school in Zagorsk, 40 miles North of Moscow.-External links:*...

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