How Children with and without Hearing Loss Describe Audiovisual Content

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this study was to explore the benefits of the use of educational audio-visual materials in facilitating learning for students with hearing loss. The study analysed whether students with hearing loss had a visual learning preference when they watched an audio-visual and if the images present contributed to the retention of more information by this group. The study sample was made up of 28 participants, from 7 to 9 years old, of whom 14 had prelingual hearing loss and 14 were age- and sex-matched students without hearing loss. They were all schooled together in general education classrooms in an oral modality. They were asked to watch an educational video and then to describe its contents orally. The results obtained from analysing the references to the video content indicate that, despite the fact that the hard of hearing group made greater reference to video content transmitted from the images than the group without hearing loss, the effect does not achieve statistical significance. The study reinforces the idea that deafness does not determine a specific learning preference.

KEYWORDS:

• Audiovisual material
• documentary
• education
• hearing loss
• images
• language
• learning
• subtitles
• video

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the children with deafness who have formed part of this study, for their availability and collaboration, as well as to the CREDAs (the Educational Resource Centres for the Hearing Impaired) and, especially, to the students without hearing loss of Vall-Llobregat infant and primary school.

Ethical Procedures

All families, both of the children with and without hearing loss, were informed in writing of the objective of the research and gave their signed consent for their children to participate in the study, following regulations established by the Ethics Committee for Human and Animal Experimentation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB, 2020). In this informed assessment, families were assured that their childrens’ answers and our video recordings would remain anonymous.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Educational Psychology Instrumental-Learning Tests