Family Influences on the Cognitive Development of Profoundly Deaf Children: Exploring the Effects of Socioeconomic Status and Siblings

Abstract

We evaluated the cognitive development of 48 profoundly deaf children from hearing families (born 1994-2002, mean age M = 8.0 years at time of test, none of whom had received early auditory-verbal therapy) as a function of family socioeconomic status and number of siblings. Overall, the deaf children matched a younger group of 47 hearing controls (M = 4.6 years) on verbal ability, theory of mind, and cognitive inhibition. Partial correlations (controlling for age) revealed positive relations in the hearing group between maternal education and inhibition, between number of younger siblings and references to emotions, and between number of close-in-age siblings and references to desires and false beliefs. In the deaf group, there were positive relations between household income and memory span, between maternal education and references to false beliefs, and between number of younger siblings and nonverbal ability. In contrast, deaf children with a greater number of older siblings aged ≤12 years showed inferior memory span, inhibition, belief understanding, picture-sequencing accuracy, and mental-state language, suggesting that they failed to compete successfully with older siblings for their parents' attention and material resources. We consider the implications of the findings for understanding birth-order effects on deaf and language-impaired children.

Correlation and agreement between Language ENvironment Analysis (lena™) and manual transcription for Dutch natural language recordings

“…Similarly, a larger family size likely also means more noise and overlapping speech in the home. At the same time, a larger number of siblings can have a negative impact on development (Downey, 2001;Macaulay & Ford, 2013). Thus, when comparing children with different socioeconomic backgrounds or family sizes, developmental differences that might look like the effect of a poorer language environment could actually be the result of noisier home environments or a stronger dilution of parental resources (Downey, 2001).…”

¿Existen diferencias en la adquisición de Teoría de la Mente entre niños sordos de padres sordos y de padres oyentes con respecto a los niños con audición normal? Una Revisión

“…Macaulay et al [17] señalan que la falta de fluidez en LS por parte de las madres se relaciona con el retraso de los niños sordos en ToM. Los niños de ambos grupos que procedían de familias más numerosas y de mayor nivel socioeconómico eran significativamente mejor que los niños que procedían de familias más reducidas.…”

Sign Language Echolalia in Deaf Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…We also cannot know whether socioeconomic status plays a role in our sample because this information was not collected. On average, families with deaf children are socioeconomically disadvantaged compared with the general population (Boss, Niparko, Gaskin, & Levinson, 2011), and this fact may negatively affect linguistic and cognitive outcomes (Macaulay & Ford, 2013).…”