Psychosocial aspects of deafness : social representations of hearing mothers / Aspectos psicosociais da surdez : a representação social de mães ouvintes

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

The objective of this study was to investigate the relation between hearing mothers? social representations of deafness and the psychosocial development of their deaf children. To this aim, semi-structured interviews were applied to ten mothers whose deaf children were being attended at CEPRE ? FCM ? UNICAMP. The deaf children were also observed in group activities at CEPRE, which enabled the researcher to look at the children?s interaction with the hearing teacher, the deaf instructor and the deaf colleagues. This qualitative research study is based on a historical-cultural and social representation approaches. Content analysis was used to analyze the data, which was grouped into four subject categories: diagnosis, conception of deafness, language aspect, and psychosocial development. The data discussion showed the child?s deafness having a genetic origin or having been acquired did not interfere in the mother?s representations of deafness. Despite the complexities involved in having a deaf child, the mothers undergoing orientation reported that changes in their representations of deafness had in fact occurred. There is a relation between the mother?s conception of deafness and the child?s psychosocial development; however this relation is not direct. Two mothers seemed to have well defined conceptions of deafness. One of the mothers viewed deafness as illness; her son uses the oral mode and presents certain difficulties as to his psychosocial development. The other mother viewed deafness as difference; her daughter has become bilingual, for she uses both languages: sign language and Portuguese, and demonstrates good psychosocial development. The other mothers, who do not present dear conceptions of deafness, seem to be steeped in a knot of factors interfering in this relation. Both those mothers who have a clinical view of deafness, as well as those who don?t face it as a disability mentioned the importance of the deaf acquiring both languages (Brazilian sign language and Portuguese in the oral modality). As to the representation of deafness in their children, even though they reported the children have developed well and are intelligent, it was evident in some of these mothers also held low expectations of their child as well as possible feelings of disbelief in their deaf child?s full potential. This is possibly the result of collective social representations of deafness. Only a few mothers represented their children as being competent and fully able children, different only in that they accessed information visually, which also means a preference for sign language

ASSUNTO(S)

child familia criança surdez deafness linguagem de sinais family sign language

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