How Babies Who Are Deaf Process Their Surroundings, According to Study

Differences in cognitive development for children who can hear and those who are deaf begin early in life, according to research by The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

For a while now, researchers have analyzed the differences in cognitive skills for preschoolers who can hear and those who have impaired hearing. The new study attempts to pinpoint when those differences first take place. And, according to the observations, it starts during infancy.

The study is a first-of-its-kind, and compares visual processing skills in infants who are deaf and those who can hear. The findings suggest it takes longer for babies with hearing problems to become familiar with new objects they see.

After a baby fully takes in a visual object, they tend to lose interest and look away. To test their visual processing skills, researchers showed a colorful object on a screen to infants who are deaf and who hear. The babies with hearing problems looked 30 seconds longer than the other infants.

This means, babies with hearing and those without process information differently, even when it’s not hearing-based.

But just because it’s taking the babies who can’t hear longer to take in the image, doesn’t necessarily mean they are learning at a slower pace.

“Because they use vision to process the world around them, they may pay closer attention to visual objects,” study co-authors Derek Houston explains. “They might actually be processing more about each object.”

Future research will need to be done to examine why these differences exist so we can teach babies in a way that’s tailored for their needs.

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