Purpose: The identification of child, device, and family/environmental factors that are associated with optimum language outcomes for infants and children using cochlear implants is a high research priority. Understanding the contributions of these factors for an individual child and family may inform clinical decisions about intensity of services…

With modern improvements to hearing aids and cochlear implant (CI) technology, and consequently improved access to speech, there has been greater emphasis on listening-based therapies for children with hearing loss, such as auditory-verbal therapy (AVT). Speech and language, speech perception in noise, and reading were evaluated before and after…

A longitudinal study reported positive speech and language outcomes for 29 children with hearing loss in an auditory-verbal therapy program (AVT group) (aged 2 to 6 years at start; mean PTA 79.39 dB HL) compared with a matched control group with typical hearing (TH group) at 9, 21, and 38 months after the start of the study. The current study…

This study examined the speech perception, speech, and language developmental progress of 25 children with hearing loss (mean Pure-Tone Average [PTA] 79.37 dB HL) in an auditory verbal therapy program. Children were tested initially and then 21 months later on a battery of assessments. The speech and language results over time were compared with…

The development of listening skills in deaf children requires emphasis during the child's entire waking day, selection of an appropriate hearing aid, educational intervention, and sequentially organized teaching-learning experiences. (Author/LS)

Comparison of the receptive vocabulary of 24 undergraduate college students with hearing loss to that of 24 peers with normal hearing found that approximately three-fourths of those with hearing loss performed poorly. Vocabulary skills were not found to be associated with degree of hearing loss. (DB)

A study involving eight toddlers (aged 22 months) with hearing loss found significant correlations between the children's receptive vocabulary sources and other subscales of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, as well as other measures of language, aspects of nonverbal cognition, and an assessment of symbolic play skills. (Contains…

Tracking as a technique for training and evaluating speechreaders' reception of connected discourse is redefined, and some of its modifications are presented. Also noted are issues in the use of tracking, such as verbatim response, talker learning, and material selection, and recommendations for preparing speechreaders for the tracking task. (JDD)

Analysis of the data showed no significant correlation between scores from the two modalities, indicating that knowledge of a person's ability to understand speech in one system provides little information about the same person's ability to understand speech in the other. (Author/CL)

Technical (e.g., the need for more audiologists) and educational (e.g., the need for personnel preparation) considerations are examined in terms of maximizing the use of residual hearing with hearing impaired students. Historical and current approaches to auditory training are discussed, as is the role of prosody in spoken language comprehension,…

This paper identifies characteristics of poor speechreaders, defines developmental dyspraxia in profoundly hearing-impaired children, and outlines the speechreading process. An active training method is described in which expressive and receptive skills are integrated, by having hearing-impaired people speechread their own speech via videotape…

This study was a longitudinal examination (21 month follow-up) of language development in a pair of fraternal twins. One twin received a cochlear implant at age 20 months secondary to sensorineural hearing loss. The other twin had normal hearing. Data were obtained every 6 months following her initial cochlear implant stimulation. Both twins…

A study of 45 hearing-impaired students (ages 10 to 19) investigated their understanding of English verb-particle combinations of varying syntactic and semantic difficulty. Results suggest an order of difficulty in learning. Idioms were found to be more difficult than literal meanings with little improvement over the age range of the subjects.…

Eleven oblique (correlated) factors were identified from an analysis of 182 mainstreamed hearing impaired students (grades 1 through 12). Two central factors were pinpointed: communicative attitude and receptive language. (CL)

An imitative test of speech pattern contrast perception was administered to profoundly deaf children using hearing aids (n=76) or cochlear implants (n=18). Implant users performed, on average, similarly to individuals with an 88 decibel hearing loss, indicating that implant use can provide auditory speech perception capacity similar to that of…