As a conclusion about PRIMARY HEARING :
« With deaf children, we face difficulties leading to behavioural problems. From his early age, the deaf child lives in a frustrating environment, because of a lack of information about a communication’s key part. On the one hand, speech and voice don’t come to him, but on the other hand, every acoustic sign of the outer world, as welle as signs from the space around him have lost their hearing acuity to him. From the moment when he strats walking, every time he has to move, the space in which he evolves has no acoustic existence. Contrary to common belief, space is full of acoustic traits. We live in an acoustic world. We need to estimate the distance of objects, the depth of the perceptive field, and the ambient volume level to our ears. Eyes provide the perspective while ears provide the direction and the depth. To the deaf child, the world is flat. Eyes will bring him the perspective which will replace the acoustic lack, thanks to an intensive Learning. When he bumps into people or onjects, the child lerans how to measure his footsteps to know the distance, and he becomes indirectly aware of the realities, as he cannot perceive them at once… This represents a double handicap : firstly, that of verbal Relationship, already known, and then that of spending his life within a full of traps’ environment, which is more badly known, more difficult to perceive this handicap’s condition, to move into it, and more important, to think and imagine its reality… » (1).
The hearing care professional’s expertise, allowing him to fit hearing aids to the deaf child, will enable the child to become aware of the distance and the volume, and hence to give him the best conditions to elaborate quality language and speech.
JYM
(1) Professor J.C. LAFON « sensory impairments and personnality » Medical psychology / Psychologie médicale 1989. 21. 13. page 1934/125
(translated from french by E.F.)