Low Empathy in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (Pre)Adolescents Compared to Normal Hearing Controls

Objective

The purpose of this study was to examine the level of empathy in deaf and hard of hearing (pre)adolescents compared to normal hearing controls and to define the influence of language and various hearing loss characteristics on the development of empathy.

Methods

The study group (mean age 11.9 years) consisted of 122 deaf and hard of hearing children (52 children with cochlear implants and 70 children with conventional hearing aids) and 162 normal hearing children. The two groups were compared using self-reports, a parent-report and observation tasks to rate the children’s level of empathy, their attendance to others’ emotions, emotion recognition, and supportive behavior.

Results

Deaf and hard of hearing children reported lower levels of cognitive empathy and prosocial motivation than normal hearing children, regardless of their type of hearing device. The level of emotion recognition was equal in both groups. During observations, deaf and hard of hearing children showed more attention to the emotion evoking events but less supportive behavior compared to their normal hearing peers. Deaf and hard of hearing children attending mainstream education or using oral language show higher levels of cognitive empathy and prosocial motivation than deaf and hard of hearing children who use sign (supported) language or attend special education. However, they are still outperformed by normal hearing children.

Conclusions

Deaf and hard of hearing children, especially those in special education, show lower levels of empathy than normal hearing children, which can have consequences for initiating and maintaining relationships.     

Examining Interactions across Language Modalities: Deaf Children and Hearing Peers at School

Deaf youth easily become communicatively isolated in public schools, where they are in a small minority among a majority of hearing peers and teachers. This article examines communicative strategies of deaf children in an American "mainstream " school setting to discover how they creatively manage their casual communicative interactions with hearing peers across multimodal communicative channels, visual and auditory. We argue that unshared sociolinguistic practices and hearing-oriented participation frameworks are crucial aspects of communicative failure in these settings. We also show that what look like "successful" conversational interactions between deaf and hearing children actually contain little real language and few of the complex communication skills vital to cognitive and social development. This study contributes to understanding the social production of communicative isolation of deaf students and implications of mainstream education for this minority group.     

Mobile hearing program in central rural Manitoba.

A mobile hearing program was developed to detect and alleviate deafness and rehabilitate deaf individuals in rural Manitoba. The first project was established in central Manitoba in December 1973 for children, whose school performance can be affected by minimal hearing loss. Volunteers from the community, trained by an audiologist, conduct screening procedures, and children with possible hearing impairment receive audiologic and otolaryngologic assessment. Close clinical liaison between audiologist and otologist is important.     

Marital Structure,Genetic Fitness,and the <Emphasis Type="Italic">GJB2</Emphasis> Gene Mutations among Deaf People in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia,Russia)

Autosomal recessive deafness type 1A (DFNB1A) caused by mutations in the GJB2 gene (Cx26) is the main cause of nonsyndromic hearing impairment in many populations worldwide. It is considered that widespread prevalence of DFNB1A can be due to the long tradition of intermarriages between deaf people (assortative marriages) combined with their increased social adaptation and genetic fitness after widespread introduction of sign language. For the first time, the data on mating structure and reproduction of deaf people living in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia, Russia) are presented in comparison with contribution of the GJB2 gene mutations to the etiology of hearing impairment. The relative fertility of deaf people compared to their hearing siblings is 0.78 (mean number of children 1.76 ± 0.10 and 2.24 ± 0.09 to deaf and their hearing siblings, respectively, p = 0.0018). The rate of assortative marriages among deaf people is 77.1% (81 of 105 marriages). Biallelic mutations in the GJB2 gene were found in 42.2% (43 of 102) of examined deaf people, which corresponded to diagnosis DFNB1A for these patients. A comparison of deaf marital partners by GJB2 status revealed a proportion of noncomplementary marriages (24%) in which hearing loss in both partners was caused by the presence of biallelic GJB2 gene mutations resulting in the birth of only deaf children in such couples. Thus, the set of obtained data including a relatively high genetic fitness (expressed as relative fertility) of deaf people in Yakutia in combination with a high rate of assortative marriages among them and high incidence of DFNB1A indicates a possible weakening of selection against such trait as “deafness” and a possible increase in the frequency of GJB2 mutant alleles in subsequent generations.     

Color and communication in the dreams of hearing and deaf persons.

Research suggests that the experiences recollected from the dreams of persons who are deaf or who have hearing loss reflect their personal background and circumstances. However, this literature also indicated that few studies have surveyed the occurrence of color and communication styles. Individual differences in the perception of color and affect were especially noted. These differences appeared dependent upon whether the impairment was congenital or acquired. In this study, 24 deaf persons and a person with hearing loss who use American Sign Language (ASL) were compared to a sample of hearing persons regarding colors and communication occurring in their dreams. Both groups were found to communicate in dreams as they do in life, deaf persons and person with hearing loss by signing, and hearing persons by speech. The deaf persons and a person with hearing loss experienced more color and more vividness, and the time of onset for a hearing impairment showed differences among persons with hearing loss. The findings also suggest that utilizing dreams as therapeutic material when treating persons with hearing loss and nonimpaired persons may have clinical utility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

High incidence of profound deafness in an isolated community

In a Muslim Israeli Arab village, different types of hearing loss affect some 2% of the inhabitants. Most cases of profound deafness are due to recessive mutations in the Connexin-26 gene. Since in this community, marriages are by preference within the family (consanguineous), for many of the couples from the village the risk for an affected child is high. There are 30 families living in the village in which both parents have normal hearing and at least one child has a profound hearing defect. In these families, the birth of a child with profound deafness did not change family planning. The rate of marriage was similar for the siblings of deaf children as for other individuals in the village. The major problems were encountered by the deaf individuals themselves; in particular, most of the women were not married. Because of the distinctive nature of this particular problem, different types of screening programs were envisaged. However, all of them are problematic. Therefore, as a first step it was decided to begin a program including individual genetic counseling together with education of the entire population on practical aspects of human genetics.     

Parental attitudes toward genetic testing for pediatric deafness

Recent molecular genetic advances have resulted in genetic testing becoming an option for deaf individuals and their families. However, there is little information about the interest in such testing. To investigate this issue, parents with normal hearing who have one or more deaf children were surveyed about their attitudes toward diagnostic, carrier, and prenatal genetic testing for deafness. This population was chosen because it represents the majority of individuals who are encountered in clinical practice, given that 90%-95% of deaf individuals are born to persons with normal hearing. Of 328 surveys distributed, 96 were completed and returned. Of the respondents, 96% recorded a positive attitude toward genetic testing for deafness, including prenatal testing, although none would use this information to terminate an affected pregnancy. All respondents had a poor understanding of genetics, with 98% both incorrectly estimating the recurrence risk of deafness and misunderstanding the concept of inheritance. Notably, these findings were similar in the group who had had genetic testing for their children and in the group who had not, suggesting either that the parents who received genetic testing did not receive genetic counseling or that the counseling was not effective. On the basis of these results, it was concluded that this population is interested in the use of genetic testing and that testing should not be done without first providing formal genetic counseling. Appropriate counseling can help parents to understand the risks, benefits, and limitations of genetic testing.     

Binaural Fusion and Listening Effort in Children Who Use Bilateral Cochlear Implants: A Psychoacoustic and Pupillometric Study

Bilateral cochlear implants aim to provide hearing to both ears for children who are deaf and promote binaural/spatial hearing. Benefits are limited by mismatched devices and unilaterally-driven development which could compromise the normal integration of left and right ear input. We thus asked whether children hear a fused image (ie. 1 vs 2 sounds) from their bilateral implants and if this “binaural fusion” reduces listening effort. Binaural fusion was assessed by asking 25 deaf children with cochlear implants and 24 peers with normal hearing whether they heard one or two sounds when listening to bilaterally presented acoustic click-trains/electric pulses (250 Hz trains of 36 ms presented at 1 Hz). Reaction times and pupillary changes were recorded simultaneously to measure listening effort. Bilaterally implanted children heard one image of bilateral input less frequently than normal hearing peers, particularly when intensity levels on each side were balanced. Binaural fusion declined as brainstem asymmetries increased and age at implantation decreased. Children implanted later had access to acoustic input prior to implantation due to progressive deterioration of hearing. Increases in both pupil diameter and reaction time occurred as perception of binaural fusion decreased. Results indicate that, without binaural level cues, children have difficulty fusing input from their bilateral implants to perceive one sound which costs them increased listening effort. Brainstem asymmetries exacerbate this issue. By contrast, later implantation, reflecting longer access to bilateral acoustic hearing, may have supported development of auditory pathways underlying binaural fusion. Improved integration of bilateral cochlear implant signals for children is required to improve their binaural hearing.     

Haptic Spatial Configuration Learning in Deaf and Hearing Individuals

The present study investigated haptic spatial configuration learning in deaf individuals, hearing sign language interpreters and hearing controls. In three trials, participants had to match ten shapes haptically to the cut-outs in a board as fast as possible. Deaf and hearing sign language users outperformed the hearing controls. A similar difference was observed for a rotated version of the board. The groups did not differ, however, on a free relocation trial. Though a significant sign language experience advantage was observed, comparison to results from a previous study testing the same task in a group of blind individuals showed it to be smaller than the advantage observed for the blind group. These results are discussed in terms of how sign language experience and sensory deprivation benefit haptic spatial configuration processing.     

Attitudes of deaf adults toward genetic testing for hereditary deafness.

Recent advances within molecular genetics to identify the genes for deafness mean that it is now possible for genetic-counseling services to offer genetic testing for deafness to certain families. The purpose of this study is to document the attitudes of deaf adults toward genetic testing for deafness. A structured, self-completion questionnaire was given to delegates at an international conference on the "Deaf Nation," held at the University of Central Lancashire in 1997. The conference was aimed at well-educated people, with an emphasis on Deaf culture issues. Eighty-seven deaf delegates from the United Kingdom returned completed questionnaires. The questionnaire had been designed to quantitatively assess attitudes toward genetics, interest in prenatal diagnosis (PND) for deafness, and preference for having deaf or hearing children. The results from this study provide evidence of a predominantly negative attitude toward genetics and its impact on deaf people, in a population for whom genetic-counseling services are relevant. Fifty-five percent of the sample thought that genetic testing would do more harm than good, 46% thought that its potential use devalued deaf people, and 49% were concerned about new discoveries in genetics. When asked about testing in pregnancy, 16% of participants said that they would consider having PND, and, of these, 29% said that they would prefer to have deaf children. Geneticists need to appreciate that some deaf persons may prefer to have deaf children and may consider the use of genetic technology to achieve this. Any genetic-counseling service set up for families with deafness can only be effective and appropriate if clinicians and counselors take into consideration the beliefs and values of the deaf community at large.     

Habituation,Recovery and the Similarity of Song Types within Repertoires in Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) (Aves,Emberizidae)

Male red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) respond to playback of conspecific song on their territories with the song spread, a graded aggressive display in which males extend their wings to expose their red epaulets while singing. We show that the intensity of song spread display declines with repeated presentation of one song type, and recovers when song types are switched. Recovery is greater for switches between song types that are acoustically dissimilar than for switches between song types that are acoustically similar. Recovery is no different for switches between two song types taken from the repertoires of different males than for switches between song types recorded from the same male. Analysis of acoustic features also indicates that song types recorded from different males are not more dissimilar than are song types from the same male. Our results do not support the idea that repertoires of red-winged blackbirds are composed of similar song types in order to facilitate individual recognition. Rather, repertoires may be constructed of dissimilar song types, so as to help maintain the response of listeners despite habituation.     

Effect of Exogenous Cues on Covert Spatial Orienting in Deaf and Normal Hearing Individuals

Deaf individuals have been known to process visual stimuli better at the periphery compared to the normal hearing population. However, very few studies have examined attention orienting in the oculomotor domain in the deaf, particularly when targets appear at variable eccentricity. In this study, we examined if the visual perceptual processing advantage reported in the deaf people also modulates spatial attentional orienting with eye movement responses. We used a spatial cueing task with cued and uncued targets that appeared at two different eccentricities and explored attentional facilitation and inhibition. We elicited both a saccadic and a manual response. The deaf showed a higher cueing effect for the ocular responses than the normal hearing participants. However, there was no group difference for the manual responses. There was also higher facilitation at the periphery for both saccadic and manual responses, irrespective of groups. These results suggest that, owing to their superior visual processing ability, the deaf may orient attention faster to targets. We discuss the results in terms of previous studies on cueing and attentional orienting in deaf.     

Intersecting Cultures in Deaf Mental Health: An Ethnographic Study of NHS Professionals Diagnosing Autism in D/deaf Children

Autism assessments for children who are deaf are particularly complex for a number of reasons, including overlapping cultural and clinical factors. We capture this in an ethnographic study of National Health Service child and adolescent mental health services in the United Kingdom, drawing on theoretical perspectives from transcultural psychiatry, which help to understand these services as a cultural system. Our objective was to analyse how mental health services interact with Deaf culture, as a source of cultural-linguistic identity. We ground the study in the practices and perceptions of 16 professionals, who have conducted autism assessments for deaf children aged 0–18. We adopt a framework of intersectionality to capture the multiple, mutually enforcing factors involved in this diagnostic process. We observed that professionals working in specialist Deaf services, or with experience working with the Deaf community, had intersectional understandings of assessments: the ways in which cultural, linguistic, sensory, and social factors work together to produce diagnoses. Working with a diagnostic system that focuses heavily on ‘norms’ based on populations from a hearing culture was a key source of frustration for professionals. We conclude that recognising the intersectionality of mental health and Deaf culture helps professionals provide sensitive diagnoses that acknowledge the multiplicity of D/deaf experiences.     

High frequency hearing loss correlated with mutations in the GJB2 gene

Genetic hearing impairment affects approximately 1/2000 live births. Mutations in one gene, GJB2, coding for connexin 26 cause 10%-20% of all genetic sensorineural hearing loss. Mutation analysis in the GJB2 gene and audiology were performed on 106 families presenting with at least one child with congenital hearing loss. The families were recruited from a hospital-based multidisciplinary clinic, which functions to investigate the aetiology of sensorineural hearing loss in children and which serves an ethnically diverse population. In 74 families (80 children), the aetiology was consistent with non-syndromic recessive hearing loss. Six different connexin 26 mutations, including one novel mutation, were identified. We show that GJB2 mutations cause a range of phenotypes from mild to profound hearing impairment and that loss of hearing in the high frequency range (4000-8000 Hz) is a characteristic feature in children with molecularly diagnosed connexin 26 hearing impairment. We also demonstrate that this type of audiology and high frequency hearing loss is found in a similar-sized group of deaf children in whom a mutation could only be found in one of the connexin 26 alleles, suggesting connexin 26 involvement in the aetiology of hearing loss in these cases. In our study of the M34T mutation, only compound heterozygotes exhibited hearing loss, suggesting autosomal recessive inheritance.     

Waardenburg syndrome in the Turkish deaf population

Waardenburg Syndrome (WS) is an autosomal, dominantly inherited disorder that accounts for more than 2% cases of congenital deafness. The aim of this study is to determine the WS incidence among deaf pupils. Dysmorphological examination was performed on 720 children who were attending 7 special schools in Turkey and who had hearing disabilities. All subjects in the study were examined for WS diagnostic criteria. We detected 49 patients (6.8%) with WS among the 720 children examined. Six patients had WS type 1 (12.2%) and 43 had type 2 (87.8%). We observed 2 to 5 major diagnostic criteria for WS. Out of all the subjects in the study, only two patients have deaf first degree relatives. All subjects had been previously examined by physicians for deafness but none of them had been then diagnosed to have Waardenburg Syndrome. Instead, they were all misdiagnosed as to have nonsyndromic deafness. Awareness of WS diagnostic criteria by the physicans will provide accurate diagnosis for many deaf pupils and their first degree relatives who are able-to-hear WS patients and whose children are at risk for deafness.     

Eye gaze during observation of static faces in deaf people

Knowing where people look when viewing faces provides an objective measure into the part of information entering the visual system as well as into the cognitive strategy involved in facial perception. In the present study, we recorded the eye movements of 20 congenitally deaf (10 male and 10 female) and 23 (11 male and 12 female) normal-hearing Japanese participants while they evaluated the emotional valence of static face stimuli. While no difference was found in the evaluation scores, the eye movements during facial observations differed among participant groups. The deaf group looked at the eyes more frequently and for longer duration than the nose whereas the hearing group focused on the nose (or the central region of face) more than the eyes. These results suggest that the strategy employed to extract visual information when viewing static faces may differ between deaf and hearing people.     

Perception of Binaural Cues Develops in Children Who Are Deaf through Bilateral Cochlear Implantation

There are significant challenges to restoring binaural hearing to children who have been deaf from an early age. The uncoordinated and poor temporal information available from cochlear implants distorts perception of interaural timing differences normally important for sound localization and listening in noise. Moreover, binaural development can be compromised by bilateral and unilateral auditory deprivation. Here, we studied perception of both interaural level and timing differences in 79 children/adolescents using bilateral cochlear implants and 16 peers with normal hearing. They were asked on which side of their head they heard unilaterally or bilaterally presented click- or electrical pulse- trains. Interaural level cues were identified by most participants including adolescents with long periods of unilateral cochlear implant use and little bilateral implant experience. Interaural timing cues were not detected by new bilateral adolescent users, consistent with previous evidence. Evidence of binaural timing detection was, for the first time, found in children who had much longer implant experience but it was marked by poorer than normal sensitivity and abnormally strong dependence on current level differences between implants. In addition, children with prior unilateral implant use showed a higher proportion of responses to their first implanted sides than children implanted simultaneously. These data indicate that there are functional repercussions of developing binaural hearing through bilateral cochlear implants, particularly when provided sequentially; nonetheless, children have an opportunity to use these devices to hear better in noise and gain spatial hearing.     

Reduction of protein sequence complexity by residue grouping

It is well known that there are some similarities among various naturally occurring amino acids. Thus, the complexity in protein systems could be reduced by sorting these amino acids with similarities into groups and then protein sequences can be simplified by reduced alphabets. This paper discusses how to group similar amino acids and whether there is a minimal amino acid alphabet by which proteins can be folded. Various reduced alphabets are obtained by reserving the maximal information for the simplified protein sequence compared with the parent sequence using global sequence alignment. With these reduced alphabets and simplified similarity matrices, we achieve recognition of the protein fold based on the similarity score of the sequence alignment. The coverage in dataset SCOP40 for various levels of reduction on the amino acid types is obtained, which is the number of homologous pairs detected by program BLAST to the number marked by SCOP40. For the reduced alphabets containing 10 types of amino acids, the ability to detect distantly related folds remains almost at the same level as that by the alphabet of 20 types of amino acids, which implies that 10 types of amino acids may be the degree of freedom for characterizing the complexity in proteins.     

在电子耳蜗CIS方案中语音增强算法的实现

目的：电子耳蜗是一个帮助聋人恢复听觉的装置。它根据人耳的仿生学原理,用有限个电极刺激神经以恢复聋人听觉。目前实际应用的电子耳蜗技术已经能够在安静环境下帮助聋人恢复一定的听觉。本文在使用GIS方案的基础上,采取了频谱增强的方法,以提高电子耳蜗的在噪声环境下的性能。另外采用计算机仿真及声音合成的方法,以评估耳蜗植入者听到的声音。本实验获得了比较好的试听效果。其中提出的方法对耳子耳蜗的研究和工程现实具有一定的意义。     

Widening the lens: what the manual modality reveals about language,learning and cognition

The goal of this paper is to widen the lens on language to include the manual modality. We look first at hearing children who are acquiring language from a spoken language model and find that even before they use speech to communicate, they use gesture. Moreover, those gestures precede, and predict, the acquisition of structures in speech. We look next at deaf children whose hearing losses prevent them from using the oral modality, and whose hearing parents have not presented them with a language model in the manual modality. These children fall back on the manual modality to communicate and use gestures, which take on many of the forms and functions of natural language. These homemade gesture systems constitute the first step in the emergence of manual sign systems that are shared within deaf communities and are full-fledged languages. We end by widening the lens on sign language to include gesture and find that signers not only gesture, but they also use gesture in learning contexts just as speakers do. These findings suggest that what is key in gesture''s ability to predict learning is its ability to add a second representational format to communication, rather than a second modality. Gesture can thus be language, assuming linguistic forms and functions, when other vehicles are not available; but when speech or sign is possible, gesture works along with language, providing an additional representational format that can promote learning.