Comparative study of the dynamic, static, and rotary balance of deaf and hearing children.

The purpose of the present study was to measure the dynamic, static and rotary balance of deaf and hearing children. 20 deaf and 20 normal hearing students matched for mean age of 123 +/- 5.9 or 5.6 mo. and sex (11 boys, 9 girls) performed three tests of balance. A series of Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests and a Kendall Tau were applied to assess whether balance was affected in sensorineural deafness and to assess whether age and sex were factors in over-all balance, respectively. Significant differences were noted between groups for dynamic balance and rotary balance. Although not significant, there was a difference of 57.8% in number of trials for successful completion of static balance in favor of the hearing children. In the present study, over-all balance in deaf children was significantly inferior to the balance in hearing children. Knowledge of these differences may aid those working with deaf children in physical education.