A Comparative Study of the Cognitive Function of the Hearing-impaired and Non-Hearing-impaired Pupils of Two Primary Schools in Lagos State, Nigeria.

The World Summit for Children of which Nigeria is a signatory promised to ratify the convention on the rights of the child. In Africa, the problem of the handicapped child is by no means insignificant. Communicable diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality in Nigerian children. There is a disagreement even amongst experts about the thinking processes of people with hearing impairments. The difficulty faced with the hearing-impaired in Africa is that they fall behind in their academic achievements. Also, they leave school less qualified than their hearing peers. The attitude of the society in Nigeria is that these children are best forgotten in homes and that they cannot achieve a functional capacity in society. Hearing-impaired children hardly go beyond the primary school level because it is believed that their level of intelligence is not the same as children with normal hearing. Cognitive functions deals with the mental processes that deal with thinking, perceiving and understanding. This study hopes to examine similarities or differences that may exist in the cognitive functions of the hearing-impaired and the nonhearing-impaired using non-verbal tests. This study also hopes to highlight the intelligence level of the hearing-impaired persons and other cognitive functions using a modified Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices.