Book excerpt: Oftentimes a child's deafness can be as disconcerting to the uniformed adult as it is debilitating to the deaf child. Yet parents, students, and teachers sho try to inform themselvs find doing so difficult: the issues are emotional ath too often have been the subject of clashes among professional and lay people. In this comprehensive study, Meadow provides a rational, informed, and balanced approach. Individual chapters survey the central work done on the linguistic, cognitive, social, and psychological effets of profound deafness in children and offer practical discussions with abundant concrete examples. The result is a book that provides a context for understanding research in childhood deafness and ways to apply its findings. Of particular interest to professionals who work with deaf children, the concluding chapter analyzes unresolved matters of policy. These include: oral-only versus oral+visual communication; recommended forms fo visual communication; residential versus day school education; the benefits and liabilities of mainstreaming; the treatment of minority, multiply handicapped, and gifted deaf children; and the role of deaf adults in the socialization of deaf children. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.