Untreated hearing loss in children was once misdiagnosed as intellectual disability

Evidence

Before the development of proper hearing diagnostic methods, a hearing-impaired child may have been considered mentally challenged, since it was not possible to discover the hearing impairment that hindered learning. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2629

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general history of misdiagnosis and to how sensory deficits shape early development, elsewhere in this book and in disability studies.