Oftentimes a child's deafness can be as disconcerting to the uniformed adult as it is debilitating to the deaf child. Yet parents, students, and teachers sho try to inform themselvs find doing so difficult: the issues are emotional ath too often have been the subject of clashes among professional and lay people. In this comprehensive study, Meadow provides a rational, informed, and balanced approach. Individual chapters survey the central work done on the linguistic, cognitive, social, and psychological effets of profound deafness in children and offer practical discussions with abundant concrete examples. The result is a book that provides a context for understanding research in childhood deafness and ways to apply its findings. Of particular interest to professionals who work with deaf children, the concluding chapter analyzes unresolved matters of policy. These include: oral-only versus oral+visual communication; recommended forms fo visual communication; residential versus day school education; the benefits and liabilities of mainstreaming; the treatment of minority, multiply handicapped, and gifted deaf children; and the role of deaf adults in the socialization of deaf children. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

This book examines sociolinguistic, educational and psycholinguistic factors that shape the path to sign bilingualism in deaf individuals and contributes to a better understanding of the specific characteristics of a type of bilingualism that is neither territorial nor commonly the result of parent-to-child transmission. The evolution of sign bilingualism at the individual level is discussed from a developmental linguistics perspective on the basis of a longitudinal investigation of deaf learners' bilingual acquisition of German sign language (DGS) and German. The case studies included in this volume offer unique insights into bilingual deaf learners’ sign language and written language productions, and the sophisticated nature of the bilingual competence they attain. Commonalities and differences between sign bilingual language development in deaf learners and language development in other language acquisition scenarios are identified on the basis of a dynamic model of change in the evolution of (learner) language, with a focus on the role of language contact in the organisation of multilingual knowledge and the scope of inter- and intra-individual variation in learner grammars. In many respects, as becomes apparent throughout the chapters of this work, sign bilingualism represents not only a challenge but also a resource. Given this cross-disciplinary perspective, the insights on bilingualism and deafness in this volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and professionals.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Reading Victorian Deafness is the first book to address the crucial role that deaf people, and their unique language of signs, played in Victorian culture. Drawing on a range of works, from fiction by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, to poetry by deaf poets and life writing by deaf memoirists Harriet Martineau and John Kitto, to scientific treatises by Alexander Graham Bell and Francis Galton, Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people’s language use was a public, influential, and contentious issue in Victorian Britain. The Victorians understood signed languages in multiple, and often contradictory, ways: they were objects of fascination and revulsion, were of scientific import and literary interest, and were considered both a unique mode of human communication and a vestige of a bestial heritage. Over the course of the nineteenth century, deaf people were increasingly stripped of their linguistic and cultural rights by a widespread pedagogical and cultural movement known as “oralism,” comprising mainly hearing educators, physicians, and parents. Engaging with a group of human beings who used signs instead of speech challenged the Victorian understanding of humans as “the speaking animal” and the widespread understanding of “language” as a product of the voice. It is here that Reading Victorian Deafness offers substantial contributions to the fields of Victorian studies and disability studies. This book expands current scholarly conversations around orality, textuality, and sound while demonstrating how understandings of disability contributed to Victorian constructions of normalcy. Reading Victorian Deafness argues that deaf people were used as material test subjects for the Victorian process of understanding human language and, by extension, the definition of the human.

This book presents the revolutionary approach to the treatment of hearing loss proposed by Professor Henryk Skarżyński and developed in collaboration with the group of internationally recognized experts on clinical and experimental otolaryngology, otosurgery, and audiology. The authors present an in-depth look at different aspects of this comprehensive concept of treatment of partial and total deafness with hearing implants, and discuss the approaches to diagnostics and patient selection, results in different groups of patients, the surgical technique, and procedures. This book also covers audiological aspects, auditory training, patient's performance, and psychology. This book is a comprehensive review of the method of partial and total deafness treatment developed and introduced into clinical practice by Professor Henryk Skarżyński. The publication is noteworthy for presenting a multifaceted approach to the subject from related science experts’ and clinicians’ point of view.

This edited volume picks up where Psychological Perspectives on Deafness, Volume 1 ended. Composed of review chapters that reflect cutting-edge views from well-known international researchers within the field, this book surveys issues within the field of deafness, such as cognition, learning disabilities, social development, language development, and psychopathology. It also highlights the many new and exciting findings currently emerging from researchers across a variety of disciplines--psychology, education, linguistics, and child development. The chapters will engage, challenge, and lead the field on to productive empirical and theoretical work relating to the broad range of questions which concern the psychological perspectives on deafness.

Lays out the practical steps families can take to adjust to a loved one's hearing loss. The book shows how the exchange of information can be altered at fundamental levels, what these alterations entail, and how they can affect one's ability to understand and interpret spoken communication.

Challenging behaviours, such as aggression and violence, are more common in deaf people than hearing people. Filling a crucial gap in the international market, this book will appeal equally to those who work occasionally or entirely with Deaf or hearing impaired client groups of all ages. Multi-disciplinary professionals with specialist knowledge of working with deaf people explore aspects of mild to severe challenging behaviour with reference to its cause, assessment, prevention and management. This book will be of relevance to professionals and carers involved in the delivery of actual and potential aggression management in the fields of Mental health Education Learning disability Speech and language therapy Prison and forensic services Audiology Nursing International contributors, providing a wealth of easily accessible knowledge, consider this extremely heterogeneous group from neurological, behavioural, socio-political, service user, psychodynamic and systemic perspectives.