When growing communication skills, learning to recognize emotions is vital. Children with hearing loss may struggle to identify speech emotions and instead rely solely on visual cues. Hearing aids can be a great help in teaching children to identify verbal and emotional cues.
How Can Hearing Loss Affect Emotional Understanding?
A study comparing emotional understanding in social situations of children with hearing loss versus children without found that children with hearing loss neglected ambiguous emotional information in favor of explicit visual cues. Children with hearing loss do this to help avoid misunderstandings.
While the study found this adaptive strategy effective in recognizing emotions, they noted that the strategy “may lead to misinterpretation of emotions in social situations.”
Providing tools such as hearing aids to children with hearing loss can help them gather a full understanding of social situations and help minimize miscommunication.
How Can Hearing Aids Help Children Socialize?
Being social can help children thrive in more ways than expected. Positive peer relationships among children have been associated with better behavioral, emotional and academic outcomes in the future.
Many children struggle with the use of hearing aids at first. But with consistent use, hearing aids can help children with struggles in their daily life, including:
- Listening to and understanding verbal cues.
- Paying attention to the emotions of their peers.
- Frustrations at communication barriers.
With hearing aids, children can not only better interact with their peers at group events such as birthday parties at Santa Rosa Park, but more easily grow their social, behavioral and emotional skills.
If your child is experiencing signs of hearing loss, schedule an appointment with M.K. Larson Audiology today.
