American Sign Language (ASL)
Manual (hand) language with its own syntax and grammar used primarily by people who are deaf.
Aspect of pronunciation that involves bringing articulatory organs together so as to shape the sounds of speech.
Technical tools and devices such as alphabet boards, text telephones, or text-to-speech conversion software used to assist people with physical or emotional disorders in performing certain actions, tasks, and activities.
A health care professional trained to identify and measure hearing impairments and related disorders using a variety of tests and procedures.
Auditory brainstem response (ABR) test
Test used for hearing in infants and young children, or to test for brain functioning in unresponsive patients.
Eighth cranial nerve that connects the inner ear to the brainstem.
Hearing loss that may be associated with an autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.
Auditory neuropathy (AN)
Absent or severely distorted auditory brainstem responses with preserved otoacoustic emissions and cochlear microphonics.
Auditory / oral approach
Encourages the child to use one or more of the following: speech acquisition, language development, optimal use of residual hearing, and lipreading (speech reading).
A parent centered approach which seeks to develop spoken language through a structured program based on a highly enhanced auditory and language input.
Brain disorder that begins in early childhood and persists throughout adulthood; affects three crucial areas of development: communication, social interaction, and creative or imaginative play.
Biological system that enables individuals to know where their bodies are in the environment and to maintain a desired position; normal balance depends on information from the labyrinth in the inner ear, and from other senses such as sight and touch, as well as from muscle movement.
Snail-shaped structure in the inner ear that contains the organ of hearing.
Medical device that bypasses damaged structures in the inner ear and directly stimulates auditory nerve to allow some deaf individuals to learn to hear and interpret sounds and speech.
Conductive hearing impairment
Hearing loss caused by dysfunction of the outer or middle ear.
Something that you are born with, or present at birth.
One group of herpes viruses that infect humans and can cause a variety of clinical symptoms including deafness or hearing impairment; infection with the virus may be either before or after birth.