An examination of the academic achievement and social/ emotional adjustment of normally hearing children reared by deaf parents

The purpose of the present study was to assess the academic achievement and social/emotional adjustment of normally hearing children reared by deaf parents. Twenty-six (M=12, F=14) children reared by deaf parents whose primary means of communication was American Sign Language were obtained in a five-county area of East Tennessee. Verification of normal hearing acuity was made. A com parison group of children reared by hearing parents, who came from the same classroom as the hc/dp, were matched for age, sex, race, and IQ. Academic achievement was measured by the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT). Social/emotional adjustment was measured by teacher completion of the Revised-Behavior Problem Checklist (R-BPC). Visual inspection of the data and individual analyses of variance suggest no significant difference between the two groups of children on any variables of the PIAT and R-BPC. The parents of both groups completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Interpretation of the BDI results was complicated by the different procedures necessary to gather these data. It was tentatively concluded that deaf parents may experience a greater degree of depression than adults in the general population. To the extent that these findings can be generalized to the population of hc/dp in the United States, it would appear that living in a deaf home where verbal communication is either non-existent or subaverage does not adversely affect these children's ability to learn in school. As a group, hc/dp are not judged as having social/emotional problems by their teachers.