Multisensory and unisensory approaches to communicating with deaf children

The history of and current controversy in education of the hearing impaired between advocates of unisensory (audition only) and multisensory (audition, vision and touch) approaches to communication for learning and socialisation for hearing-impaired children is described. Arguments from developmental and perceptual theory, information processing, early intervention pedagogy and an examination of the evidence claimed to support the superiority of unisensory approaches is presented from which the authors conclude that the superiority of multisensory approaches is well established and these should be the methods of choice in communicating with hearing-impaired children.