Denmark's (1979) functional definition of profound deafness is adopted. Deaf individuals are aware of sound and may detect vibration but they have a limited facility of speech. Conrad (1979) and Rodda (1970) have shown the low level of scholarly achievement of such individuals. Denmark suggests that as young adults, they face the hearing world largely isolated from their parents, their friends and the professionals who advise them. This study is an attempt to explore the social problems brought about by such isolation. The thesis investigates the individual profoundly deaf young adult's self concept in relation to others. A unique form of Repertory Grid interview (Kelly, 1955)using sign language was developed, and was successfully employed with the majority of individuals. However, it became apparent that a substantial minority were lacking, sometimes wholly, in a structured form of language. A pre-interview routine was used to determine the form of investigation appropriate to the individual - an interview using sign language, or one placing heavy dependence on non verbal communication (such as mime and body language). Both forms of investigation enabled an 'existential phenomenological' description of the self-awareness of the individual to be produced. In the larger group, the procedure followed was near to the orthodox analysis of Rep Grids; in the smaller group, analysis involved a greater degree of interpretive intuition. Justification for the judgements made in each case is provided. The findings are reported in the form of case studies: 40based on Rep Grids, 10 on non-verbal interviews. Thematerial provides an advance in the understanding of the experience of the profoundly deaf young adult. Exuberance and vitality feature in the majority group interviewed by Repertory Grid method. Examples of isolation and of intense personal relationships are found in the minority group. The deaf have a special concern with: those whoaccept them and those rejected by them; dependence upondeaf peers rather than hearing adults; the apprehension of success and personal failure. The main finding of this research is that the young adult deaf do possess a self-awareness and this self-awareness is that of the normal individual. Theidiosyncracies of deaf behaviour are especially wellrepresented in the smaller group. This research confirms the suggestion of Denmark that the majority of deaf individuals referred for psychiatric help are not suffering from mental illness. The study also provides research evidence for necessary changes in the early education and upbringing of the deaf.

This study assessed the effective use of pure-tone testing versus speech testing as used to predict the degree of hearing handicap experienced by an individual. Twenty-one subjects over the age of 65 were tested. Each subject was administered the following test battery: spondee threshold; a pure-tone evaluation, including air and bone conduction; Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test; Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test; NU-6 for speech discrimination; establishment of most comfortable listening level (MCL) and loudness discomfort listening level (LDL); immittance testing including tympanograms, acoustic reflex thresholds, and reflex decay.

There has been a great amount of debate between the medical community and the Deaf community regarding cochlear implants. Indeed, some factions of the Deaf community have reacted with hostility to the development of the technology and have protested its implementation. Existing literature examines Deaf individuals' perceptions of cochlear implants, however there has been a significant lack of academic attention paid to the hearing children of deaf adults (codas). As children of deaf parents, codas grow up simultaneously inhabiting two worlds: the Deaf world of their parents and the hearing world of their peers. It is codas' unique position and loyalties between the Deaf world and the hearing world that make them important to the cochlear implant debate. This study investigates codas' perceptions of cochlear implantation using standard ethnographic methods, including in-depth, open-ended interviewing with codas, and immersion in the research population through ongoing participant-observation at a deaf school. The findings suggest that (1) codas' interstitial identity impacts their perceptions of and attitudes towards cochlear implantation and (2) cochlear implants have contributed to a refinement of Coda identity in relation to the Deaf community.

Facial and head movements have important linguistic roles in American Sign Language (ASL) and other sign languages and can often significantly alter the meaning or interpretation of what is being communicated. Technologies that enable accurate recognition of ASL linguistic markers could be a step toward greater independence and empowerment for the Deaf community. This study involved gathering over 2,000 photographs of five hearing subjects, five Deaf subjects, and five Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) subjects. Each subject produced the six universal emotional facial expressions: sad, happy, surprise, anger, fear, and disgust. In addition, each Deaf and CODA subject produced six different ASL linguistic facial expressions. A representative set of 750 photos was submitted to six different emotional facial expression recognition services, and the results were processed and compared across different facial expressions and subject groups (hearing, Deaf, CODA). Key observations from these results are presented. First, poor face detection rates are observed for Deaf subjects as compared to hearing and CODA subjects. Second, emotional facial expression recognition appears to be more accurate for Deaf and CODA subjects than for hearing subjects. Third, ASL linguistic markers, which are distinct from emotional expressions, are often misinterpreted as negative emotions by existing technologies. Possible implications of this misinterpretation are discussed, such as the problems that could arise for the Deaf community with increasing surveillance and use of automated facial analysis tools. Finally, an inclusive approach is suggested for incorporating ASL linguistic markers into existing facial expression recognition tools. Several considerations are given for constructing an unbiased database of the various ASL linguistic markers, including the types of subjects that should be photographed and the importance of including native ASL signers in the photo selection and classification process. / 2019-06-30T00:00:00Z

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INTRODUÇÃO: O desenvolvimento das habilidades auditivas sofre influência dos estímulos sonoros aos quais as crianças são expostas. Filhos ouvintes de pais surdos (CODAs - Children of Deaf Adults) geralmente não recebem os estímulos de fala da mesma forma que crianças filhas de ouvintes. Tendo em vista que as informações sonoras são importantes para o processo maturacional do sistema auditivo, torna-se pertinente a análise das habilidades auditivas de CODAs que foram pouco expostas à linguagem oral na primeira infância. OBJETIVO: Comparar o processamento auditivo de crianças filhas de surdos, que foram pouco expostas à língua oral no início de suas vidas, com o de crianças filhas de ouvintes. MÉTODO: Participaram deste estudo 60 crianças, na faixa etária entre 5 e 10 anos de idade, com avaliação audiológica básica (audiometria, logoaudiometria e imitanciometria) dentro dos limites de normalidade, destras, sem histórico de doenças sistêmicas e/ou neurológicas que pudessem afetar o sistema nervoso central e sem aprendizado prévio de música ou de segunda língua oral. Foram formados dois grupos semelhantes quanto a idade e sexo, sendo o Grupo Estudo (GE) composto por 30 crianças filhas de surdos sinalizadores, e o Grupo Controle (GC), por 30 crianças filhas de ouvintes. Os testes selecionados foram: Pediatric Speech Intelligibility em português, Dicótico de Dígitos, Padrão de Frequência, Gaps-In-Noise e também testes de Memória para Sons Instrumentais e Verbais. RESULTADOS: Houve diferença estatisticamente significante de desempenho entre os dois grupos, em todos os testes aplicados, com pior desempenho para o GE. Na análise de desempenho dos grupos por faixa etária, foi possível observar que a média de desempenho do GE ficou abaixo da apresentada pelo GC em todos os testes e em todas as idades avaliadas, sendo a diferença de desempenho entre os grupos maior em faixas etárias menores (5 e 6 anos). CONCLUSÕES: Pode-se concluir que a pouca exposição a estímulos linguísticos orais no início da infância, associada a fatores específicos da vivência de grande parte dos CODAs estudados, contribuiu para o baixo desempenho do GE nos testes. Assim, esses resultados indicam que estímulos sonoros ambientais, sobretudo os de linguagem oral, exercem importante influência no desenvolvimento das habilidades auditivas. Este estudo chama a atenção para a importância do acompanhamento auditivo de filhos ouvintes de pais surdos, assim como para a necessidade de exposição destas crianças aos sons linguísticos orais desde o início de suas vidas / INTRODUCTION: The development of auditory skills is influenced by the sound stimuli to which children are exposed. Hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs) do not usually receive speaking stimuli in the same way as those of hearing adults. Given that sound information is important to the maturation process of the auditory system, it is pertinent to analyze the auditory skills of hearing children of deaf signer adults that were little exposed to oral language in their infancy. OBJECTIVE: To compare the auditory processing of CODAs that were little exposed to oral language in their early infancy with that of children of hearing adults. METHOD: A total of 60 children aged 5-10 years participated in the present study. All participants received normal ratings in their basic audiometric evaluation (audiometry, speech audiometry and imitanciometry). They were right-handed, without a history of systemic and/or neurological diseases that might affect the central nervous system, and without previous musical or second spoken language training. Two groups similar in age and sex were established: the Study Group (SG) comprised 30 children of deaf signer adults and the Control Group (CG) comprised 30 children of hearing adults. The tests selected were Pediatric Speech Intelligibility, Dichotic Digits, Pitch Pattern, Gaps-In-Noise, and Memory for Instrumental Sounds and Verbal Sounds. RESULTS: The SG performed significantly worse than the CG for all tests. Moreover, an analysis of the performance of the groups per age range revealed that for all age ranges assessed, the SG performance average was below that of the CG average; the performance difference between the groups was greater in younger children (5- and 6-year olds). CONCLUSIONS: It can be concluded that the low exposure to oral linguistic stimuli during infancy, associated with specific aspects of the experience of a large proportion of the CODAs studied, contributed to the low performance of the SG in the tests. These results indicate that ambient sound stimuli, especially those related to oral language, strongly influence auditory skills. This study highlights to the importance of the auditory follow-up of hearing CODAs, as well as to the need for exposing these children to oral linguistic sounds from a very early age

INTRODUÇÃO: O desenvolvimento das habilidades auditivas sofre influência dos estímulos sonoros aos quais as crianças são expostas. Filhos ouvintes de pais surdos (CODAs - Children of Deaf Adults) geralmente não recebem os estímulos de fala da mesma forma que crianças filhas de ouvintes. Tendo em vista que as informações sonoras são importantes para o processo maturacional do sistema auditivo, torna-se pertinente a análise das habilidades auditivas de CODAs que foram pouco expostas à linguagem oral na primeira infância. OBJETIVO: Comparar o processamento auditivo de crianças filhas de surdos, que foram pouco expostas à língua oral no início de suas vidas, com o de crianças filhas de ouvintes. MÉTODO: Participaram deste estudo 60 crianças, na faixa etária entre 5 e 10 anos de idade, com avaliação audiológica básica (audiometria, logoaudiometria e imitanciometria) dentro dos limites de normalidade, destras, sem histórico de doenças sistêmicas e/ou neurológicas que pudessem afetar o sistema nervoso central e sem aprendizado prévio de música ou de segunda língua oral. Foram formados dois grupos semelhantes quanto a idade e sexo, sendo o Grupo Estudo (GE) composto por 30 crianças filhas de surdos sinalizadores, e o Grupo Controle (GC), por 30 crianças filhas de ouvintes. Os testes selecionados foram: Pediatric Speech Intelligibility em português, Dicótico de Dígitos, Padrão de Frequência, Gaps-In-Noise e também testes de Memória para Sons Instrumentais e Verbais. RESULTADOS: Houve diferença estatisticamente significante de desempenho entre os dois grupos, em todos os testes aplicados, com pior desempenho para o GE. Na análise de desempenho dos grupos por faixa etária, foi possível observar que a média de desempenho do GE ficou abaixo da apresentada pelo GC em todos os testes e em todas as idades avaliadas, sendo a diferença de desempenho entre os grupos maior em faixas etárias menores (5 e 6 anos). CONCLUSÕES: Pode-se concluir que a pouca exposição a estímulos linguísticos orais no início da infância, associada a fatores específicos da vivência de grande parte dos CODAs estudados, contribuiu para o baixo desempenho do GE nos testes. Assim, esses resultados indicam que estímulos sonoros ambientais, sobretudo os de linguagem oral, exercem importante influência no desenvolvimento das habilidades auditivas. Este estudo chama a atenção para a importância do acompanhamento auditivo de filhos ouvintes de pais surdos, assim como para a necessidade de exposição destas crianças aos sons linguísticos orais desde o início de suas vidas / INTRODUCTION: The development of auditory skills is influenced by the sound stimuli to which children are exposed. Hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs) do not usually receive speaking stimuli in the same way as those of hearing adults. Given that sound information is important to the maturation process of the auditory system, it is pertinent to analyze the auditory skills of hearing children of deaf signer adults that were little exposed to oral language in their infancy. OBJECTIVE: To compare the auditory processing of CODAs that were little exposed to oral language in their early infancy with that of children of hearing adults. METHOD: A total of 60 children aged 5-10 years participated in the present study. All participants received normal ratings in their basic audiometric evaluation (audiometry, speech audiometry and imitanciometry). They were right-handed, without a history of systemic and/or neurological diseases that might affect the central nervous system, and without previous musical or second spoken language training. Two groups similar in age and sex were established: the Study Group (SG) comprised 30 children of deaf signer adults and the Control Group (CG) comprised 30 children of hearing adults. The tests selected were Pediatric Speech Intelligibility, Dichotic Digits, Pitch Pattern, Gaps-In-Noise, and Memory for Instrumental Sounds and Verbal Sounds. RESULTS: The SG performed significantly worse than the CG for all tests. Moreover, an analysis of the performance of the groups per age range revealed that for all age ranges assessed, the SG performance average was below that of the CG average; the performance difference between the groups was greater in younger children (5- and 6-year olds). CONCLUSIONS: It can be concluded that the low exposure to oral linguistic stimuli during infancy, associated with specific aspects of the experience of a large proportion of the CODAs studied, contributed to the low performance of the SG in the tests. These results indicate that ambient sound stimuli, especially those related to oral language, strongly influence auditory skills. This study highlights to the importance of the auditory follow-up of hearing CODAs, as well as to the need for exposing these children to oral linguistic sounds from a very early age