Effects of Social Skills on Hearing Impaired Children’s Academic Achievement: A Mediation Analysis

Abstract

Previous research suggests that hearing-impaired children without adequate social skills perform at lower levels academically than normally hearing children. However, there is no study that explicitly examines whether hearing impairment negatively affects academic achievement through social skills — in other words, whether social skills mediate the relation between hearing impairment and academic achievement. By using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort, this study found that hearing-impaired children had lower social competency and academic achievement than normally hearing children, and that a specific subset of social skills mediated the relation between hearing impairment and academic achievement. Teacher-reported approaches to learning were found to be a significant mediator. The findings have important implications for both research and practice.