Deficiencia auditiva: logros y retos

Deafness has been the target of linguistics, behaviour and cognitive psychologists, doctors, engineers, speech therapist, philosophers… Prelingually deafness limitations, go well beyond of speech, turning the cognitive and linguistic development in a laborious and always uncompleted task. Deaf children rehabilitation demands an exhausting effort which contrasts with the apparent simplicity with which hearing children acquire the language. That is why few areas of science have resisted the temptation of getting closer to deafness expecting to solve the problem. However, deafness resists to any simple solution approach. Each new approach along the history has brought a new hope. Nowadays we live a very promising moment as a consequence of the technological improvements for speech perception (neurological requirement), of parents' speech influence (communicative interaction requirement) and of the great deal of knowledge of the language genesis and its use (pragmatic requirement). Nevertheless, the great challenge is to put on time the necessary bases to develop functional reading. The steps to be followed are more and more clear, and the papers of this monograph are dedicated to define the present state of them.