Evaluation of Theory of Mind, Social Competence, and Emotional Development in Preschool Children with Hearing Aids
7th World Congress of Cochlear Implants in Emerging Nations, İstanbul, Türkiye, 14 - 16 Eylül 2023, ss.28, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: İstanbul
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.28
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Introduction: Theory of Mind (ToM), known as an individual's attribution of mental states such as thoughts and beliefs to others and oneself, is an important social life skill. The ability to represent mental states is a concept that explains human social interaction as well as awareness of how such mental states shape the intentional actions of oneself and others. Hearing-impaired students with hearing aids (HA) and cochlear implants (CI) experience significant social difficulties such as loneliness, exclusion, and problems with peer relationships. These difficulties are attributed to deficits in ToMskills, which affect their understanding of others' perspectives and intentions. The first aim of this study is to examine ToM skills in HA-recipient children compared to those with typical hearing. These difficulties may prevent them from taking full advantage of social interaction and incidental learning about the intentions and beliefs of others. The second aim of this study is to define separately the relationships between social competence, emotion recognition, language skills, and ToM in HA recipient children. Method: The study compared the outcomes of typically developing children and children using HA. The participants' ages ranged from 60 to 72 months. The HA group consisted of children with moderate to severe (41-91 dB) hearing loss, fitted with conventional amplification devices for more than one year. All participants were evaluated on the social skills and expressive abilities designed for preschool children. Children's wishes, beliefs, and mental states were evaluated with the tasks in the ToM Scale. Results: Data collection is ongoing and will be presented at the conference. The mental states, wishes, beliefs, emotional expression skills, and social competencies of HA and typically developing groups will be compared. Conclusion: It is expected that hearing loss in children may have a significant effect on social cognition. However, early intervention both for amplification and habilitation may help general social skills and mental status, it might be important to better understand social-cognitive skills in these children with hearing loss in order to support their ability to infer mental states. Preliminary results suggest that early intervention may be a predictor of social skills for children using HA.
Keywords: Children, Hearing aid, Theory of Mind, Social cognition, Language