Children can only develop spoken language through consistent exposure to the acoustic cues that comprise speech and language. Until recently, hearing levels from the clinical audiogram were the primary measure used to define typical hearing and the presence or degree of a child's hearing loss. While the clinical audiogram remains an important…

Interactive silences are important strategies that can be implemented by practitioners and parents of children with hearing loss who are learning a spoken language. Types of adult self-controlled pauses and evidence pertaining to the function of those pauses are discussed, followed by a review of advantages to justify implementation of these…

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…

If parents of deaf children use all of the opportunities that occur daily to give their children the best possible language, it is stated that deaf children can learn to talk. (KW)

A study involving 19 children with hearing impairments found that those who developed intelligible speech by 36 months had at 16-23 months a high frequency of vocal utterances, a high proportion of vocal utterances that included intelligible true words, a large consonant inventory, and a high percentage of intonational utterances. (Contains…

Issues and trends in the preparation of teachers of hearing-impaired children are considered. The following competencies are identified as essential: knowledge and skills in the areas of language acquisition and development, speech development and improvement, and the development of auditory skills. (SEW)

A parent diary was used as part of an assessment of a 26-month-old severe-to-profoundly hearing-impaired child's expressive language. The diary data, which is appended, were used to obtain information about the child's expressive vocabulary, mean length of utterance, and verbal, semantic, and pragmatic performances. (Author/SEW)

This review highlights research suggesting that absence of audition precludes talkers from developing typical articulatory organizational strategies and affects their abilities to produce specific speech events. The paper describes the operational model adopted for formulating experimental hypotheses and considers five roles of auditory…

Described is the special language instruction program for three adolescent boys who are profoundly deaf and who have an educational background of failure. (CB)

The availability of cochlear implants in younger children has provided the opportunity to evaluate the relative impact of the production system, or the sounds young children can say, and the auditory system, or the sounds children can hear, on early vocal communication. Limited access to the acoustic properties of speech results in differences in…

The development of speech and language skills in hearing impaired children at the preschool level is discussed in terms of a model of communication which includes listening, speech and language, social interaction, cognition, and academics. Sample learning activities illustrate the incorporation of multiple objectives into one lesson. (DB)

An oral deaf adult discusses her early education (particularly her parents' efforts at instruction and speech training), the growth of her desire to work with the deaf, and the importance of emphasizing understanding what is said rather than methods of communication. (GW)

The question of whether the exclusive use of spoken English (i.e., oralism) causes brain atrophy for the hearing impaired child is examined in light of data presented by R. Conrad and other researchers. It is concluded that deafness itself is the fundamental cause of performance deficits. (SEW)