Oralism and the deaf child's brain: a reply to Dr. Conrad

One of the most contentious and important issues in the education of deaf children concerns the nature of the medium that should be used. The argument is whether the language of the hearing society should be used (Oralism) or a visual manual language together with speech (Total Communication or bilingualism). Recently Conrad [6,7] has claimed that the exclusive use of Oral methods fails to provide the deaf child's brain with sufficient linguistic information at an early enough age and so runs the risk of obstructing neurological growth so that functional atrophy may occur. In this situation Conrad argues 'we should not ignore the possibility that the "functional atrophy" ...may come to involve structural atrophy as well.' He concludes that Oral schools "virtually are cognitively destroying deaf children." Conrad's case rests on his interpretation of 3 kinds of circumstantial evidence. These are animal studies of auditory deprivation, hemispheric lateralization studies of deaf and hearing subjects, and finally his own data. In the present paper each of these 3 kinds of evidence is reviewed and alternative interpretations are advanced against Conrad's hypothesis of functional atrophy. It is argued that the case that Oralism is responsible for brain atrophy is not proven. It is concluded that the main problem facing deaf children and their teachers is deafness itself, and not any particular educational philosophy and group of methods such as Oralism.