Language and Cognitive Development in Deaf Children
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cognition".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2025) | Viewed by 1440
Special Issue Editors
Interests: language and cognitive development; environmental and biological factors and their interplay on development
Interests: language and cognitive development; social-cognition; literacy acquisition and development; speech and language therapy
2. Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain
3. Department of Educational Psychology, Universidad de Valladolid, 400005 Segovia, Spain
Interests: language learning; cognitive development; bilingualism; hearing loss
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The language and cognitive development of children who are born deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) is extremely variable, linked to several factors inherent to the child and to the environment they are raised in. The profiles of DHH children have been extensively documented including perceptual abilities, social cognition, language, numeracy, and executive functions. The large variability in outcomes observed in research studies has been linked to several factors including family hearing status (deaf or hearing parents), the availability of hearing technology, and access to appropriate and early interventions. An exploration of how and why deafness influences development can have far-reaching theoretical and clinical implications, for example, for understanding how all children (deaf and hearing) develop language.
Cognitive abilities are related to language development and play a role in the variability observed across all children (deaf and hearing) in how fast and well they learn to communicate. For example, basic attentional control during the first year supports the segmentation of the speech stream and facilitates the beginning of intentional communication. Early inhibitory control and working memory during the first 24 months of life help children to build robust phonological representations with later benefits observed in understanding vocabulary.
We seek to address these and related questions in the present Special Issue of Behavioral Science. To this end, we solicit original research papers and (systematic) reviews (or meta-analyses) that contribute to the following:
- Theoretically driven explanations of cognitive development and differences with typical development in children born DHH;
- Insights into neurobiological or neurocognitive factors involved in deafness and cognitive development;
- Risk and protective factors for cognitive skills in children born DHH;
- How studies of DHH children inform us about the role of cognitive abilities and language development in the wider hearing-child population;
- Challenges, strategies, and interventions in cognitive and language skills with DHH children.
Prof. Dr. Gary Morgan
Dr. Mario Figueroa González
Dr. Beatriz de Diego-Lázaro
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- deaf
- hard of hearing
- cochlear implants
- hearing aids
- signed languages
- executive function
- cognition
- theory of mind
- language development
- word learning
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