science

Post-lingual deafness

Post-lingual deafness is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Post-lingual deafness rather than just read about it. In short: Post-lingual deafness is a deafness which develops after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six. Post-lingual hearing loss is far more common than prelingual deafness.

Key takeaways

Post-lingual deafness belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Post-lingual deafness to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Post-lingual deafness from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Post-lingual deafness is a deafness which develops after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six. Post-lingual hearing loss is far more common than prelingual deafness. Typically, hearing loss is gradual, and often detected by family and friends of the people so affected long before the patients themselves will acknowledge the disability.

Causes In some cases, the loss is extremely sudden and can be traced to specific diseases, such as meningitis, or to ototoxic medications, such as Gentamicin. In both cases, the final degree of loss varies. Some experience only partial loss, while others become profoundly deaf. Hearing aids and cochlear implants may be used to regain a sense of hearing, with different people experiencing differing degrees of success. It is possible that the affected person may need to rely on speechreading and/or sign language for communication. In most cases the loss is a long-term degradation in hearing loss. Discrediting earlier notions of presbycusis, Rosen demonstrated that long-term hearing loss is usually the product of chronic exposure to environmental noise in industrialized countries (Rosen, 1965). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has asserted the same sentiment and testified before the U.S. Congress that approximately 34 million Americans are exposed to noise pollution levels (mostly from roadway and aircraft noise) that expose humans to noise health effects including the risk of hearing loss (EPA, 1972). Certain genetic conditions can also lead to post-lingual deafness. In contrast to genetic causes of pre-lingual deafness, which are frequently autosomal recessive, genetic causes of post-lingual deafness tend to be autosomal dominant.

Treatment In cases where the causes are environmental, the treatment is to eliminate or reduce these causes first of all, and then to fit patients with a hearing aid, especially if they are elderly. When the loss is due to heredity, total deafness is often the result. On the one hand, persons who experience a gradual deterioration of their hearing are fortunate in that they have learned to speak. Ultimately the affected person may bridge communication problems by becoming skilled in sign language, speech-reading, using a hearing aid, or accepting elective surgery to use a prosthetic device such as a cochlear implant.

Social impact Those who lose their hearing later in life, such as in late adolescence or adulthood, face their own challenges. For example, they must adjust to living with the adaptations that make it possible for them to live independently. They may have to adapt to using hearing aids or a cochlear implant, develop speech-reading skills, and/or learn sign language. The affected person may need to use a TTY, a videophone, an interpreter, or a relay service to communicate over the telephone. Loneliness and depression can arise as a result of isolation (from the inability to communicate with friends and loved ones) and difficulty in accepting their disability. The challenge is made greater by the need for those around them to adapt to the person's hearing loss.

References S. Rosen and P. Olin, Hearing Loss and Coronary Heart Disease, Archives of Otolaryngology, 82:236 (1965) Senate Public Works Committee, Noise Pollution and Abatement Act of 1972, S. Rep. No. 1160, 92nd Cong. 2nd session

See also Noise Pollution Noise regulation Hearing loss

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Post-lingual deafness

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Post-lingual deafness claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Post-lingual deafness before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Post-lingual deafness ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Post-lingual deafness

In research: Post-lingual deafness appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Post-lingual deafness in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Post-lingual deafness is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Deafness, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Post-lingual deafness outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Post-lingual deafness in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Post-lingual deafness means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Post-lingual deafness out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Post-lingual deafness in simple terms?

Post-lingual deafness is a deafness which develops after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six. Post-lingual hearing loss is far more common than prelingual deafness.

Why does Post-lingual deafness matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Post-lingual deafness?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Post-lingual deafness.