Hearing Loss and Young Children’s Development of Emotional Competence

Hearing loss can have a significant impact on children’s development. It can diminish children’s ability to perceive and produce spoken language, which has been studied extensively. However, hearing loss can also negatively affect children’s socioemotional development because it limits access to the social environment. Interestingly, there is little research on this. In this chapter, the authors begin by discussing the development of four aspects of emotional competence (emotion awareness, empathy, Theory of Mind, and the ability to express moral emotions) and their link to young children’s hearing loss. Parents are a huge part of young children’s social environment and therefore play an important role in the development of emotional competence in their children. The second part of the chapter discusses challenges that parents of children with hearing loss may encounter, for example with regard to parent–child interaction and parenting stress. The chapter ends with a discussion of clinical implications.