Sensory loss

Congenital or early acquired sensory loss places a child at risk of difficulties with language, communication, social, and cognitive development. This includes any degree of vision loss, hearing loss, and combined vision and hearing loss, also known as dual sensory loss or deafblindness. Delays or difficulties in language, communication, social, and cognitive development, together and separately, impact on children’s pragmatic language development. Supporting pragmatic language development and the skills that underpin it is crucial in reducing the risks of pragmatic language difficulties for children with sensory loss. Recent research on the development of pragmatics in different groups of children with sensory loss will be reviewed and discussed in this chapter. Among the themes that will be examined are early social interaction such as joint attention, conversation and social skills, and social cognition, including theory of mind. Intervention studies and strategies that support children with sensory loss efficiently in their pragmatic language development will also be discussed. Research in pragmatic language development among different groups of children with sensory loss has provided new knowledge about the pragmatics of language and human development—but there is still more to be learnt.