Children with Hearing Related Atypical Language Development

Hearing impairments are present in over one million children in the United States.  With such prevalence, it's important to have a good understanding of the implications that a hearing impairment may have on your child's language and literacy development.

How do children with hearing impairments communicate and what tools help them with communication?

• Through lip reading
• With hearing aids or cochlear implants
• With American Sign Language (ASL)
• Combinations of the above methods

Issues that children with hearing impairments may have with the English language:

• Children may have issues when trying to understand verbal language from others.  Some sounds in the English language look similar when spoken. Example: "p", "b", and "m".
• Children may experience difficulty in producing their own verbal language.  They may omit certain phonemes (see the label "Phoneme" from the home page for more info on them), and may not produce typical speech rhythms and intonations.

References

Griffin, P. (2011). Ability Diversity: Hearing Impairment [Power Point Slides].  Retrieved from online lecture notes.