The effects of deafness on play in four-year-old boys

This dissertation deals with the effects of congenital deafness on early cognitive and social development, as revealed through play. Four hearing and four deaf boys aged between 4:00 and 4:11 years were videotaped while playing in pairs (deaf with deaf, hearing with hearing). Videotapes were analyzed by two trained observers in terms of the social level of play, the developmental level of play, and the variety and complexity of play themes. The tapes were observed under two conditions. In one condition the observers could both see and hear the play activities. In the other condition, the observers could only see the activities, i.e., sound and, therefore, language output was withheld. It was found that the proportions of time spent on various levels of social play were similar for the deaf and hearing subjects. In contrast, the proportions of time spent on the various levels of developmental play were different for the two groups. Specifically, the deaf children\u27s play was developmentally less mature than that of the hearing children. In addition, the deaf children introduced play themes which were less complicated than those of the hearing children. As expected, when observers observed in silence, they tended to judge the hearing children\u27s play as being less mature than when they had access to sound (and, therefore, language). In contrast, and unexpectedly, they tended to judge the deaf children\u27s play as being more mature. These findings support the conclusion that deafness has potentially serious effects on cognitive development, at least in the type of child studied here. Moreover, the effects of language delay on observations of deaf children cannot be mimicked in hearing children by the simple expedient of withholding sound from the observer