Rights Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License Attitudes of primary students Towards their hearing-impaired peers

This study investigated the attitudes of normal-hearing primary students towards peers with hearing impairment. An audiotape was developed with the speech of a moderate-grade hearing-impaired child and that of a normal-hearing child. The speech sample was played to 160 normal-hearing students from an ordinary school. A semantic differential scale was used to measure students ' attitudes. Analysis showed that there were significantly more negative attitudes towards the hearing-impaired peers. There was also a strong relationship between attitudes and the exposure to the disabilities topic of the General Studies Course. The more positive attitudes were directly related to the course exposure. The presence of hearing-impaired classmates did not, however, significantly affect student attitudes.