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.

Background and Aim: Deaf children face many psychological problems due to their inability to hear. The present study investigates the effectiveness of art therapy (painting) in reducing the hopelessness and solitude experienced by these children.

Methods: An experimental design with pre- and post-testing and a control group was used. Multi-stage method was used for selecting 30 children with hearing impairment (age range: 7-10 years) from Isfahan. Subjects were randomly appointed to experimental and control groups. Data was collected using Kazdin hopelessness scale and Asher solitude scale. Analysis of covariance statistical method was used to analyze the data.

Results: Findings indicated a significant difference between feelings of hopelessness and solitude of deaf children in experimental and control groups (p<0.001).

Conclusion: From these findings it can be concluded that art therapy decreases the rate of hopelessness and solitude in deaf children and can be applied as an educational and therapeutic method.

Background and Aim: Specific language impairment (SLI), one variety of developmental language disorder, has attracted much interest in recent decades. Much research has been conducted to discover why some children have a specific language impairment. So far, research has failed to identify a reason for this linguistic deficiency. Some researchers believe language disorder causes defects in phonological working memory and affects auditory processing speed. Therefore, this study reviews the results of research investigating these two factors in children with specific language impairment.

Recent Findings: Studies have shown that children with specific language impairment face constraints in phonological working memory capacity. Memory deficit is one possible cause of linguistic disorder in children with specific language impairment. However, in these children, disorder in information processing speed is observed, especially regarding the auditory aspect.

Conclusion: Much more research is required to adequately explain the relationship between phonological working memory and auditory processing speed with language. However, given the role of phonological working memory and auditory processing speed in language acquisition, a focus should be placed on phonological working memory capacity and auditory processing speed in the assessment and treatment of children with a specific language impairment.