Hearing loss, even when limited to 1 ear, has been indicated as a handicap to communication and learning. Although this does not seem true based on my clinical impressions, there are no objective data available to evaluate, or even infer, what type of hearing loss can become a true handicap to overall academic achievement. Presented herein are findings that imply, although do not prove, the potential academic handicap of unilateral hearing loss. This study prospectively analyzed the audiologic and otologic screening tests in a university over a 9-year period. The University of Tokyo is one of the leading universities in Japan the students examined undoubtedly had academic ability well above average, for the entrance examination is one of the most difficult to pass in Japan. The potential handicap to academic achievement caused by hearing impairment was evaluated by comparing the prevalence of hearing impairment among the study population

Watching a speaker's lips is like hearing speech by eye instead of by ear and markedly improves speech perception. In this review I summarise studies over the last sixty years about lip reading, it's issues, methodological problems, experimental and co relational studies, issues of cerebral lateralization, localization and cognitive and neuro psychologic function. Several studies on speech reading in general suggest that hearing impaired groups actually do not possess superior speech reading skills compared to normal controls. With function magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) it was also found that the linguistic visual cues are sufficient to activate auditory cortex in the absence of auditory speech sounds. Here I presented data and arguments about all aspects of the phenomenon of lip reading and it's use in rehabilitation audio logy

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There is a general belief that speech perception training and specifically speechreading training for adults with acquired hearing impairment is very useful. Numerous researchers have mentioned that visual cues play an important role even in speech perception of people with normal hearing. In this review article publications and rasearch of different years on lipreading training have been have been reviewed.

Background and Aim: Most of the studies indicates that the parents of the hearing impaired children show many mental health problems after the diagnosis of their children&aposs hearing impairment. Counselling with the parents of the hearing impaired children is one of the most important goals of any early intervention program. This paper describes a study to determine the effectiveness of a group counselling programme for parents of hearing impaired children.

Materials and Method: It was a semi-experimental study with a single group pretest-post test design. The participants were all the parents of hearing impaired children attending in an early intervention center. First the parents&apos mental health were assessed.Then the group counselling program was implemented. Program has involved six weekly 1.5 hour sessions. The format of each session included both lecture presentation and group discussion using cognitive behavioral procedure. Subjects were assessed before and immediately after group therapy by means of General Health Questionnaire(GHQ) and Symptom Check List 90 (SCL-90) questionnaires.

Resuts: The first part of the project had shown that over the half of the parents had considerable psychosocial morbidity. Comparisons showed a significant reduction from pretreatment to posttreatment in depression, anxiety and most of other psychological problems.

Conclusion: The study supports the effectiveness of group therapy programs in the treatment of parents of hearing impaired children. Concerning the progress of early detection programs for the children&aposs hearing impairment more studies should be done in the field of counseling with their parents.

Background and Aim: Despite the abundance of literature about deaf children, few works specifically address the concept and practice of difficulties in parenting hearing-impaired children. The first interactions of the child are with his parents, and parents have the most important role in child improvements during early intervention programs. The main purpose of this paper was to investigate different aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children.   

Methods: In this article, we reviewed all aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children in papers from 1984-2009 in Medline, Scopus and Proquest and relative textbooks. The semi-professional role of parents of hearing-impaired children make them feel under excessive stress and this usually affects their other roles as fathers and mothers. Many factors including child age, type of hearing loss and parents' individual characteristics may influence the impact of child's hearing loss on parents.

Conclusion: Parenting a hearing-impaired child is both similar and different to parenting any other child. Where there are differences, there are usually challenges too. Taking support and advice from professionals and other parents are necessary and invaluable for parents of hearing-impaired children.

Background and Aim: Cued speech as a kind of communication method, is a system which utilizes several hand configurations and locations to supplement the normal visible manifestations of speech. This study was aimed to investigate the effects of Persian cued speech on the speech discrimination scores of hearing impaired children.
Methods: Sixteen 9-12 years old profoundly hearing impaired children were divided into two matched-groups of cases and controls. Cases were taught cued speech in a five-month period of 45-60 minutes daily therapy. Speech discrimination score test was tested pretest, post-test and three-week follow-up test in both groups. Mixed repeated measurement was used to analyze the repeated measures data.
Results: There was a significant difference between pretest (without cued speech) and the other two tests of post-test and follow-up (both with cued speech) in cases. The speech perception scores of the cases were almost completed (p=0.001) after cued speech practicing but no significant difference was seen in speech perception scores of control group.(p>0.05)
Conclusion: The results indicate that Persian cued speech is an efficient tool to increase speech discrimination scores of hearing impaired children.

Background and Aim: Regarding the importance of employment in social and emotional status of individuals, it would be important for the deaf. The purpose of the present study was to assess the employment status of the members of Tehran deaf community.
Methods: This descriptive study was performed on all members of Tehran deaf community. A researchers-made questionnaire which had three parts (demographic information, employment status of the deaf members and their attitudes regarding employment) was used in this study. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive methods.
Results: Majority of deaf community members were adult (ages ranging between 18 and 30). Sixty-eight of them (52.5%) were female and 53 (47.5%) were male, from our participants, 56.2% were unemployed and 43.8% were employed. Main problems were: having no access to facilities regarding their disability (14.5%), communication problems (9.4%), lower salaries because of their disability (12.4%), being far from the working place (15.4%), disproportion of working environment to their disability (11.4%), maltreatment of their coworkers (13.2%), maltreatment of their employer (12.5%) and discrimination because of their disability (11.2%), the attitudes of the deaf members were positive regarding the employment in all areas: 90% of them considered it as an essential part of life versus 10% of them mentioned not very important issue.
Conclusion: Our findings showed that most of the deaf were supported by their family members, but not by the social facilities or their past education. The social policies should be reformed to support employment of the deaf.

Background and Aim: A system that could make speech visible to deaf people has been dreamt of for long time. Several systems have been developed during recent decades with the most popular being cued speech invented 50 years ago by Cornett (1967). The aim of this article is to review researches about cued speech and its efficacy on different language skills of hearing impaired children.
Methods: In this article we reviewed researches on cued peech and its impacts on speech and literacy of hearing impaired children. We searched Medline, Proquest and Scopus search engines with the "cued speech" keyword and read all textbooks and thesis published between 1972 and 2011. Cued speech is an oral system which makes the sounds visible and accessible. It makes speech perception much simpler and improves lip-reading skills and ability of using residual hearing in hearing impaired children.
Conclusion: Cued speech enhances children's communication and speech perception and discrimination from early ages. It improves speech and ability to benefit from cochlear implantation. The original impetus behind cued speech was to improve literacy levels of hearing impaired children and it has been found to be uniquely successful.

Background and Aim: The birth of a hearing-impaired child and raising him/her often brings special psychological feelings for parents, especially mothers who spend more time with the child. This study aimed to compare the general health status in mothers of hearing-impaired and hearing children.

Methods: This was a descriptive-analytic study. General Health Questionnaire was used to identify general health status and data were analyzed with independent-t test.

Results: The general health level of mothers of hearing-impaired children was lower than mothers of normal hearing children (p=0.01 ). The average scores of anxiety (p=0.01), depression (p= 0.01) and physical (p=0.02) symptoms and social function (p=0.01) of mothers of hearing-impaired children was higher than mothers of normal hearing ones (p=0.01).

Conclusion: Having a child with hearing impairment affects mothers’ general health status. Our findings show that it’s necessary to provide psychological and social support for mothers of hearing-impaired children.

Background and Aim: Hearing impairment can have an impact on adolescents’ quality of life and can lead to their isolation and depression. The main purpose of this research was to study the effectiveness of a mental rehabilitation program based on positive thinking skills training on increasing happiness in a group of hearing impaired girls and boys.

Methods: In this experimental study, pre- and post-test plan with a control group was used. All of the hearing impaired students (girls and boys) in all high schools of southern parts of Tehran, Iran, in year 2012-13 were our statistical research community. 48 hearing impaired girls and boys were selected by multistage sampling including stratified, purposive, and random sampling. They were randomly divided into two groups of experimental and control. Each group consists of 12 boys and 12 girls. Positive thinking skills were trained to experimental groups during eight 45-minutes sessions, twice a week. We used the Oxford happiness questionnaire to assess the level of happiness.

Results: Using analysis of covariance showed that positive thinking skills training had meaningful and positive effect on increasing happiness of hearing impaired boys and girls in the experimental groups (p<0.01). Also, the mean happiness scores of boys and girls were meaningfully different (p<0.01).

Conclusion: Positive thinking skills training increases the happiness scores of hearing impaired adolescents. So, the approach taken in this study can be considered as an appropriate method for psychological-education interventions, counseling and treatment in hearing impaired adolescent.

Background and Aim: Studies have found that deaf individuals have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, such as behavioral problems, than those who can hear. The aim of this review was to provide a summary of the literature on behavioral problems, with specific reference to deaf individuals. The objectives of the review were to establish the prevalence of behavioral problems in deaf populations describe the risk factor for behavioral problems in deaf populations and describe approaches to intervention and behavioral problems prevention that have been used in deaf populations.

Recent Findings: A review of articles published between 1991 and 2013 showed that the prevalence of behavioral problems in deaf people is higher than that of hearing people. Risk factors for behavioral problems in deaf populations include language impairments, communication problems, the role of parents, and the community’s beliefs and attitudes regarding the issue.

Conclusion: Given the high prevalence of behavioral problems in deaf people, the effectiveness of prevention strategies should be examined. Consequently, it would be advantageous to increase the availability of specialist mental health services, promote deaf awareness including their abilities, promote awareness and skills development among teachers, staff, and specialists and implement behavior change programs.

Background and Aim: Various studies indicate that deaf children compared with hearing children have problems in all aspects of emotional development, including facial expression, emotional understanding of display rules, mixed and contradictory emotions and theory of mind. This article reviews studies of impaired emotional development in children with hearing impairment.

Recent Findings: Some findings indicate that young deaf children function similar to hearing children. The difficulty in understanding display rules experienced by deaf children can be explained by appealing to their inability to adequately express emotions in emotion-eliciting contexts, as opposed to their difficulty in understanding mental states. Overall, research findings indicate that emotional understanding in various aspects and dimensions is associated with children's language abilities.

Conclusion: Results obtained show that more aspects of deaf children 's emotional development (such as interpretation and recognition of facial expression) are similar to that of their peers. However, deaf children performed more poorly in tasks which required experience in understanding display rules and theory of mind . Recent findings generally demonstrate that language plays an important role in the emotional development of children. Therefore, deaf children in comparison to hearing children are less able performers.