Development of Spoken Language by Deaf Children

Abstract

Studies of speech perception, production, phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary for deaf and hard-ofhearing children tend to show a normal sequence of developments at a slower than normal rate. There is a wide range of performance at every age and every degree of hearing loss, although there appears to be a critical level of hearing loss at about 90 dB HL, separating "deaf" from "hard-of-hearing" children. Experimental data show that deaf children who receive cochlear implants within a few years of the onset of deafness perform similarly to hardof- hearing children. Factors that are most successful in explaining the variability include characteristics of the child's home and educatio..