Psychological Development of Deaf Children :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
This book is the first comprehensive examination of the psychological development of deaf children. Because the majority of young deaf children (especially those with non-signing parents) are reared in language-impoverished environments, their social and cognitive development may differ markedly from hearing children. The author here details those potential differences, giving special attention to how the psychological development of deaf children is affected by their interpersonal communication with parents, peers, and teachers. This careful and balanced consideration of existing evidence and research provides a new psychological perspective on deaf children and deafness while debunking a number of popular notions about the hearing impaired. In light of recent findings concerning manual communication, parent-child interactions, and intellectual and academic assessments of hearing-impaired children, the author has forged an integrated understanding of social, language, and cognitive development as they are affected by childhood deafness. Empirical evaluations of deaf children's intellectual and academic abilities are stressed throughout. The Psychological Development of Deaf Children will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers studying deafness and how it relates to speech and hearing; developmental, social, and cognitive psychology; social work; and medicine.
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Customer Reviews

Definite must-read for anyone involved with Deaf children!

2000-11-14
I was surprised to find that no one had written a review about this book. I know it has been used as a recommended textbook at the University of Pittsburgh in Deaf Education and Educational Psychology, and it was recommended to me by at least four professors. This may constitute part of the problem in deaf and special education, and regular education in public schools for deaf and hearing impaired children. The little amount of research that is being done by people like Marc Marschark, who is a genius in my opinion, is not filtering down to those who need to use this information in making sure that equal opportunity to education is available to these children, no matter what environment they are placed in.

I specifically went to read what Marschark has written about intelligence, memory, and attention in deaf children. Since I am totally deaf, I recognize some of the problems that arise when a child is presented with nothing but verbal/oral material in a learning situation. Marschark did more research than he needed to or others would have done, and he pulls all the research together to make a comprehensible whole. The references he provides in this book are valuable for referring back to and reading on their own, since he places them in context. This book was published in 1993, and I really think an update is needed because neuroscience has found out some significant information over the last few years that apply to teaching and understanding the workings of the mind in the presence of deafness or hearing loss. For example, it has been shown that prelingually-deafened adults use their auditory cortex when lipreading or using American Sign Language. This indicates a rewiring of the brain which occurs in children whose deafness is caught early enough to use manual language with or teach lipreading skills to. This information could be vitally important in teaching those with hearing loss, and also be used to pressure Congress to demand that all newborns be tested for hearing loss prior to leaving the hospital. The importance of determining hearing loss early is mandatory to providing these children with educational opportunities early enough to make up for their diversity (I refuse to call it a disability when the Deaf community does not recognize it as such).

Marschark writes well. The book is immensely readable. He also provides enough information to show that deafness does not equate with lack of intelligence, for which I am supremely thankful. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh