Perspective of Deafness-Exam 1 20/04/2015 3:46 PM Deaf People and Society Single Most striking feature/ Verbal communication barriors See better because you get better at eye sight because you can t rely on your hearing o Substitute visual for auditory Sense of community with others o About 93 percent of deaf children have hearing parents o When a hearing parent has a deaf child there are different paths and choices to make very early on. This can define their community and their way of life forever. Bernstein Law #1 Everything is connected to everything else Some say the deaf culture is an ethnic group September 3 rd 2013 What do you think it would be like to be a deaf person? Look at different perspectives Deaf The sense of hearing is non-functional for ordinary communication, with or without use of an assistive listening device o Ex: hearing aid/cochlear implants o Even if you make sounds louder they still can t use their hearing Hard of hearing Hearing impaired Might have a decrease in sensitivity Sounds may have to be louder to hear it but they can use the sound input for communication purposes Can use hearing aids to hear better Congenital vs. adventitious (acquired) Pre-linguistic-Congenital o Prior to the onset of language o About 12 months first sign of talking o Generally by the 3 rd birthday Present at birth or shortly after birth
Baby or newborn who s hearing doesn t work well We are going to focus on the deafness that occurs early on o Children listening maps their experiences and this is how they learn o When you can t hear the world becomes a silent movie. Children may not even know communication is through moving your lips and speaking o If you don t have the tool to acquire your first language how do you acquire the skills you need to succeed and acquire a first language in many cases we don t know what made them deaf o some children are born with perfect hearing and then weeks or months after birth lose it newborn screenings o by law each newborn should have their hearing tested o children can pass that screening and a few weeks later lose their hearing and no one will really know because its hard to pick up on o could be a time up until the age of three that they aren t getting the input you think they are Heredity and genetics play a small role Deafness is rarely from heredity (7 or 8 percent) If the parents don t know that the baby is deaf they aren t going to really do anything different. They don t know that they need to help their child to get language data. The child misses out on a lot early on, they don t develop important tools for learning Deaf children of deaf parents if the parents know they will always communicate with the children in a way that works well o Sign language right away o Get the language input The issue is with hearing parents with deaf children (90 percent) 1-3 per thousand children is going to have a significant hearing impairment (deaf congenital) 60-80 thousands children are getting help through special ed programs it s a real challenge to deal with children who are deaf Deafness as defect (medical-pathological view)-many hearing people have this view on deafness People saw it as a defect that could be fixed
Typically if your ill you would seek medical assistance to go back to normal This view says that deafness is one of those things, that you should fix deafness so you can go back to normal Find a cure Trying to fix the child so they can fit into a standard (being normal) Normal is defined as hearing Until you fix the problem you are abnormal. Being abnormal is typically seen as a bad thing There is a notion that deafness as a medical defect is that something is wrong with you because a part of you doesn t work right Deafness as difference (cultural view)-usually view of deaf people who are in the Deaf culture Being deaf isn t something to be fixed To be deaf is simply to be a different kind of human being Nothing wrong with being deaf it is just different So why are we trying to fix someone and make them something their not? Views of Deafness Recent trends o Changes in the past 40 years! A paradigm shift from medical pathological to cultural models o Now to be deaf isn t necessarily a bad thing o Deaf people can live well adjusted fulfilling life What caused changes? o A number of forces o Most people thought that sign language was making pictures in the air not an actual language (prior to stokoe) o Recognition of sign language as a true language (mid 60 s)! William stokoe: became interested in sign language. He noticed just like with spoken language, sign language had elements that combine to make signs. Different gestures and hand movements that repeat over again. It was very much like sounds and syllables.! Stokoe said we ought to take sign language seriously just like every other language. Now we have a real language that is produced in 3d space that is perceived by the eye. People laughed at him at first but he stuck with it. Mid 1960 he
published a book on the linguistic of American Sign Language. Now this language could be taken seriously! Sign language is a left hemisphere function just like other languages.! This opened the door for a little respect for those who used sign language Rise of total communication philosophy (use of sign in schools) o Signing was used as a legit language o mid 1960 s there was a study that came out with a babbidge report. Examining the state of education of deaf children (are we doing a good job?)! the answer was no! deaf children were graduating from schools of the deaf not even being able to read at a 3 rd grade level. Thousands of kids were being under educated! people began to ask why? Why are they undereducated? " Some people said maybe its because we can t communicate with them very well because of their deafness. In the real world they use sign language because it is easy and effective. Speaking and watching lips is hard and doesn t work as well. " Many educators began to think they should start using sign in schools to help them educate better! In 1965 there was proposal to start using Total Communication at Schools for the deaf. " Multi-model communication " Everybody signed and spoke at the same time. Deaf signer would be able to follow what they are saying " English sentence in many forms (sound, visually on lips and visual on hands) " Redundant information (through different channels) " The person can understand it somehow! Argument between oralists versus the manualists began because of this educational change Societal changes : civil rights, power movements, recognition of pluralism
o America is a pluralist society, it is a glorious gathering of people of many different kinds o Acceptance of the idea that people can be different and that doesn t make them less worthy o Not everyone feels this way till this day but as a whole societies view changed o People with disabilities began to think of themselves as another minority group! People began to be interested in the concept of deafness as a difference! Deafness as a cultural minority group " Shared history of not being respected " Deaf people experienced all that minorities experienced " There could be a cultural group (like deaf) that are a minority Legislation o Rights with people with disabilities Communication and technology o Interpreting, captioning, TDD s, videophones, text pagers, IM, internet, skype/facetime o Prior to 1970 s there was no professional interpreters! Help deaf people engage in the hearing world! The only people that did this was their hearing children or hearing people that were close to them. o Every tv set that you buy has the ability to have closed captioning if you want them! Very big deal, now the first time deaf people can watch tv and understand what is going on o Deaf people were the first people in this country to use a form of texting.! Deaf people for the first time can independently get in touch with other people! Before this they always had to go through a hearing person to talk to other people
o Relay centers with sign language interpreters that make the call for you. You type what you want to be said and the relay agent reads the text and tells the hearing person. Changes in views of culture (TV, movies, etc.) o Historically in movies and tv whenever there was a deaf character they were typically seen as an object of pity o In the west wing, there was a deaf character with a deaf actress and they didn t say a word about it. It was just another person in the film.! Showed respect to the deaf community. Made a point that being deaf isn t worth making a fuss over your just another person in society. September 5 th 2013 The Nature of hearing impairment Ossicles are the smallest bones in the human body Three areas of the hearing mechanism o Outer ear-conductive hearing loss o Middle ear-conductive hearing loss! Ossicles bones are here o Inner ear-sensorineural hearing loss! Cochlea and auditory nerve Types of hearing loss Middle ear-conductive hearing loss o Sometimes the lining of the cavity gets infected o The cavity is filled up with fluids and it gets filled leading to pain o The bones can t move the way they should o They cut an incision in the base of the ear drum and insert a tube which allows the fluid to drain out o This leads to a temporary hearing loss! You can hear things but it is not very loud o Tend to be easy to fix! Medically or surgically o Common with little kids Inner ear o Involves the cochlea
o Hair cells are inside the cochlea (lining it) o All of the hair cells send signals to the brain where it is interpreted as sounds Conductive o Issue with the sound energy being conducted from the outside world in through your ear canal through the middle ear up o If something disrupts this passage you won t hear as well o Problem with the middle ear o Build up of boney growth inside the middle ear and the bones can t move.! This can be treated surgically Sensorineural o Issue is with the inner ear o The cochlea isn t working right o The auditory nerve isn t working When testing you try to establish how intense a sound has to be for a person to just barely hear it o Range for hearing is 20-20,000 hertz for humans o We don t need the very low or high frequency of sound in general o Test people s hearing in the critical middle range of hearing o What is the faintest sound that an average person can detect at a certain frequency that is the threshold of audibility o Threshold of audibility! The point you are guessing if a sound was made! Half the time you get it right and half you don t Tested thousands of people to see how intense a sound has to be for an average person to just barely hear it (threshold) o This level is different for different frequencies o This point is known as 0 o This means minimum amount of sound that a large group will hear half of the time o The starting point Then you test someone who has a hearing impairment and play that same sound and the person won t be able to hear it. The person is trying to find out how much more intense/louder does the sound have to be for you to just barely hear it
Psychology and Deafness???? Church s findings- deaf personalities defined as listed contradictory, negative adjectives View 1) it s all bogus because of testing issues o Testing issues:! Language! Modality- speaking vs. signing! Examiners- " Experience, knowledge, perspective View 2) Much of it is bogus because of testing issues, but there are some valid generalizations in the list o Shared experiences -Ecological View Behavior is a function of the person (history, etc.) and the situation Deaf people are psychologically normal human beings striving to adjust to subnormal environmental input and abnormal environmental pressures. Dr. Edna Levine o b=f(p+s) a normal (healthy) reaction to unusual circumstances may appear to be abnormal by usual standards -a deaf person is a normal deaf person, which is not the same as a normal hearing person do not make value judgments o remember the kids has a reason to be afraid of dogs 9/12/13 Shared Experiences deaf children don t realize they are different until it is brought to their attention having difficult communicating with hearing people including members of their own family more fuss over their medical issues lack of stimulation through hearing sense difficultly learning in school American Sign Language How does one define the culture identity of the Deaf Culture