Unilateral hearing loss - possible impacts on speech, language, behaviour and learning

UNILATERAL HEARING LOSS
Possible Impact on the Understanding of Language and Speech	Possible Social Impact	Potential Educational Accommodations and Services
·  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.	·  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.	·  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.