The acquisition of language is a time locked, auditory linked process related to early maturational periods in a child’s life. It is essential that any hearing loss be identified as early as possible to insure optimal language development. The nature of hearing impairment makes it imperative that a team of professionals work together to diagnose a hearing loss and chart the management of the child with hearing loss.
Hearing losses that are present at birth or that present themselves later, but are in the genes at birth, are termed congenital. Some of the known causes of congenital hearing loss are:
- Maternal Rubella
- Cytomegalovirus/Maternal Infection
- Ototoxic and other drugs or maternal alcoholism
- Hypoxia
- Maternal Syphilis
- Parental Ionizing Irradiation during Pregnancy
- Toxoplasmosis
- Recessively inherited deafness
Hearing loss that occurs after birth is known as acquired. Some of the known causes of acquired hearing loss are:
- Hypoxia at birth
- Traumatic Delivery
- Premature Delivery
- Infection/High Fevers
- Infantile Measles or Mumps
- Noise Trauma
- Meningitis
- Encephalitis
- Otitis Media (Acute, Chronic, Serous) (most common cause of temporary HL in children)
- Accidents(Trauma) to the Ear or Head
- Ototoxic Drugs
Observations of Infants in Response to Sound:
- Sucking response/Cessation of sucking
- Arousal from sleep
- Gross body movements
- Orienting behavior
- Turning of the head
- Wide-eyed “what is it” look
- Pupillary dilatation
- Motor reflexes
- Facial grimaces
- Movement of a finger
- Crying or cessation of crying
- Startle or Moro Reflex (in response to loud sounds)
Before 6 months of age, infants are establishing a language-specific phonetic perceptual auditory base. Children with hearing loss of any degree are likely to demonstrate:
- Vocabulary problems
- Problems with auditory problem solving
- Auditory memory problems
- Problems with receptive language development
- Problems with expressive language development
- Problems with speech production
- Auditory-visual integration problems
- Reading comprehension problems
If responses to auditory stimuli do not appear to be “normal”, the child’s physician should immediately be contacted and the child’s hearing should be assessed by an audiologist. There are various methods of testing auditory functioning, which allows the behavioral assessment of functional hearing and the objective measurement of the ear’s response to auditory stimulation.
If the child’s speech and language development seems “delayed”, the child should receive a complete medical examination, followed by an audio metric evaluation and a speech/language evaluation.
