· Child can "hear"
but can have difficulty understanding in certain situations, such as hearing
faint or distant speech, especially if poor ear is aimed toward the person
speaking.
· Will typically have
difficulty localizing sounds and voices using hearing alone.
· The unilateral listener
will have greater difficulty understanding speech when environment is noisy
and/or reverberant, especially when normal ear is towards the overhead
projector or other competing sound source and poor hearing ear is towards the
teacher.
· Exhibits difficulty
detecting or understanding soft speech from the side of the poor hearing ear,
especially in a group discussion.
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· Child may be accused of
selective hearing due to discrepancies in speech understanding in quiet
versus noise.
· Social problems may arise
as child experiences difficulty understanding in noisy cooperative learning,
or recess situations.
· May misconstrue peer
conversations and feel rejected or ridiculed.
· Child may be more fatigued
in classroom due to greater effort needed to listen, if class is noisy or has
poor acoustics.
· May appear inattentive,
distractible or frustrated, with behavior or social problems sometimes
evident.
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· Allow child to change seat
locations to direct the normal hearing ear toward the primary speaker.
· Student is at 10 times the
risk for educational difficulties as children with 2 normal hearing ears
and 1/3 to 1/2 of students with
unilateral hearing loss experience significant learning problems.
· Children often have
difficulty learning sound/letter associations in typically noisy kindergarten
and grade 1 settings.
· Educational and audiological
monitoring is warranted.
· Teacher inservice is
beneficial.
· Typically will benefit
from a personal FM system with low gain/power or a sound-field FM system in
the classroom, especially in the lower grades.
· Depending on the hearing
loss, may benefit from a hearing aid in the impaired ear.
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