Help-seeking behavior in young children with hearing loss

Objective: Help-seeking behavior is a coping strategy which involves seeking assistance from others as necessary when finding it difficult to solve problems by oneself. As individuals with hearing loss face many obstacles in everyday life, they need to acquire appropriate help-seeking behavior at an early stage. In this study, we investigated help-seeking behaviors among young children with hearing loss in Japan, and analyzed the degrees of acquisition.

Method: Mothers caring for young children (aged 3-5 years) with hearing loss were included. A checklist of help-seeking behaviors in young children was administered. The checklist consisted of 20 question items divided into three categories: verbal help-seeking, non-verbal help-seeking, and indirect help-seeking; the questions were scored on a six-point Likert scale. We compared the results of mothers caring for children with hearing loss to results from a previous study of mothers caring for children with normal hearing (Nishimoto, 2023).

Results: Children with hearing loss had lower verbal help-seeking scores than children with normal hearing, especially in terms of verbal help-seeking behaviors that required describing their situation in detail. In addition, children with hearing loss had higher non-verbal help-seeking scores than children with normal hearing; children with hearing loss they tended to use their eyes and facial expressions to seek help from other individuals.

Conclusion: The results indicated that children with hearing loss are able to use verbal help-seeking behaviors where they state their problems to or make requests of other individuals. However, they tend to use eye contact or facial expressions rather than verbal behaviors when they need to explain their situations in detail. This may be due to the influence of hearing loss on language development. It is necessary to consider the relationship between help-seeking behaviors and language development in future research.

References: Naomi Nishimoto. (2024). Relationship of help-seeking behavior with temperament and perfectionism in 3-year-old children. Journal of Comprehensive Welfare Sciences,15,33-42