Hard of hearing children mental development brought up in families of hearing parents

The article is devoted to the study of the hard of hearing children mental development brought up in families of hearing parents. The article substantiates the relevance and need for special attention to children with impairment of hearing. The general characteristic of the concept ‘hard of hearing child’ is given. The factors influencing hearing loss are identified, three groups of children with impairment of hearing are characterized: deaf, hard of hearing and late deaf children. An analysis is made of the development of mental processes in hard of hearing children: sensations and perception, attention, memory, thinking and speech. The features of the hard of hearing children mental development in families of hearing parents are revealed. A description is given of the study, the purpose of which was to compare the intellectual abilities of hard of hearing children with and without mental retardation. The characteristics of the sample and diagnostic tools of the study are given. A dependence was found on the success of children in completing tasks: success in two subgroups decreases as the tasks become more difficult. At the same time, the success of hard of hearing children with mental retardation is lower than that of children without developmental delay, with the exception of tasks to detect an analogy between pairs of figures in the matrix. The results made it possible to state that in many respects the family and other social institutions perform an educational, corrective and emotionally supportive function, which has a positive effect on the mental development of hard of hearing children. The need to provide high-quality professional psychological assistance to hearing parents is noted.