Concerts for Hearing Impaired Children

Hearing impairment affects children in a variety of ways: social relations, concept of self, language development, speech pronunciation and academic achievements. These abilities require auditory processing and speech perception. Hearing loss affects not only auditory thresholds but also auditory processing, that is, the ability to fully understand the auditory elements such as pitch, loudness, etc. Usage of hearing aids /cochlear implants is the first step for rehabilitation. Auditory training is of the most important goals of proper auditory rehabilitation. In order to perceive speech, the auditory system has to be able to follow and analyze small and rapid changes within the sound wave. Only a trained auditory trained system is capable of distinguishing delicate changes in speech, related, for example to pitch, timbre and intensity. Most auditory rehabilitation is done with language stimuli, since the major goal of rehabilitation is understanding speech, improving language skills and supporting academic achievements. However, music is also an auditory meaningful stimuli, that requires and improves auditory training. It also involves delicate auditory changes such as pitch, timbre and intensity. It has been demonstrated in many studies that musical training improves not only musical skills but also affects psychoacoustic skills and speech perception. Music has also been proven as relaxing, enjoyable and fun.

The Concerts for Hearing Impaired Children project was established taking all of this into account. We believe that exposing hearing impaired children to music exposes them not only to the joy of music itself, but also to auditory training that may improve their auditory abilities. The concerts are appropriate for children in musical content and simultaneously translated to sign language. The audience holds balloons in order to feel musical sound wave vibrations.