The endbulbs of Held are formed by the ascending branches of myelinated auditory nerve fibers and represent one of the largest synaptic endings in the brain. Normally, these endings are highly branched and each can form up to 1000 dome-shaped synapses. The deaf white cat is a model of congenital deafness involving a type of cochleosaccular degeneration that mimics the Scheibe deformity in human...

In this study, deaf children's understanding of their own emotions was compared with that of hearing peers. Twenty-six deaf children (mean age 11 years) and 26 hearing children, matched for age and gender, were presented with various tasks that tap into their emotion awareness and regulation (coping) regarding the four basic emotions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear). The findings suggest t...

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 implan...

A deaf lesbian couple who sought a sperm donor with a family history of deafness in order to have a child they hoped would be deaf have attracted a lot of criticism. They have been criticised for deliberately creating a deaf child, for denying their child a hearing aid, and for raising the child in a homosexual household.

Hearing loss is an economically and socially important cause of human morbidity. It is estimated that at least 20% of the population develop clinically significant hearing loss at some time during their lives. Hereditary hearing loss occurs in approximately 1/2000 newborns. During the past five years, dramatic advances have been made in the mapping of more than 60 loci for non-syndromic deafnes...

Reading is not merely "language by eye." Rather, it builds fundamentally on primary language processes. For hearing readers, this means that spoken language processes, including phonological processes, are critical to high achievement in reading. We examine the implications of this fact for deaf readers by considering the relationship between language and reading and by reviewing the research o...

Deaf children frequently have trouble understanding other people's emotions. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind can account for this. This research focused on the spontaneous use of mental states in explaining other people's emotions by 6- and 10-year-old deaf children as compared to their hearing peers. Within both age-groups deaf children referred to others' beliefs as ofte...

Cochlear implants are devices that allow deaf people to hear. Consequently, implanting them in children seems to be a very beneficent intervention. However, some deaf parents have opposed it in the name of the preservation of their culture. For them, deafness is a rich culture with its own language (signing), and implanting their children will prevent them from being members of their parents' c...

In attachment research, there has been a growing interest in how adults conceptualize their relationships with their own parents as well as in the transmission of attachment status from parent to child and the variables that influence that transmission. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the transmission of attachment from deaf mother to child. Adult Attachment Interviews were...

Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf ...