NYSTCE Deaf and Hard of Hearing 063 cheat sheet

Deaf and Hard of Hearing

• Hearing loss is classified by degree (slight 16-25 dB, mild 26-40, moderate 41-55, moderately severe 56-70, severe 71-90, profound 91+ dB HL) and by type: conductive (outer/middle ear), sensorineural (cochlear or auditory nerve), and mixed.

• Audiogram interpretation: air-conduction thresholds show overall hearing sensitivity; a bone-conduction gap with normal bone thresholds indicates conductive loss, while air and bone thresholds that are both elevated and close together indicate sensorineural loss.

• Speech banana: conversational phonemes occupy roughly 250-8000 Hz at 20-60 dB HL; high-frequency consonants (/s/, /sh/, /f/, /th/) carry limited amplitude and are the first lost in sloping high-frequency loss, affecting plurals, possessives, and verb tense.

• IDEA categories: 'deaf' means a hearing loss so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification; 'hard of hearing' is a loss that adversely affects educational performance but is not included under 'deaf'.

• Educational impact depends on age of onset, degree and configuration of loss, age of identification, amplification use, and access to spoken and/or signed language - not on audiometric degree alone.

• Prelingual loss (before spoken language is established, typically before ~3 years) has different language-acquisition implications than postlingual loss; later loss preserves an established spoken language base.

• Amplification options: behind-the-ear hearing aids for mild-to-severe loss, cochlear implants for severe-to-profound sensorineural loss, bone-anchored devices for conductive/mixed loss, and FM/DM remote-microphone systems to improve speech-to-noise ratio in classrooms.

• Communication approaches span oral/aural, auditory-verbal, total communication, and bilingual-bicultural (ASL and English); the IEP team selects based on the student's language and communication needs, not a single mandated method.

• Deaf culture: ASL is a complete natural language with its own grammar (not signed English); Deaf community members may not view deafness as a disability, which matters for culturally responsive assessment and family counseling.