A study of 60 Chinese Americans and 46 controls found the Chinese Americans were more likely to believe persons with speech disorders could improve speech by "trying hard," to view people using deaf speech and people with cleft palates as perhaps being emotionally disturbed, and to regard deaf speech as a limitation. (Author/CR)

The study found that the extent of teacher control over conversations with deaf pupils using oral/aural only, signed English, or cued speech communication affected pupil response, including taking initiative in conversations, misunderstanding of the teacher, and length of conversational contributions. Different methods of communication by the 13…

Hearing-impaired speechreaders use linguistic context to compensate for the poor visibility of some speech movements. Constraints on spoken language enhance speechreading performance and help compensate for the paucity of sensory data. The largest effects come from linguistic constraints imposed by sentence context--syntactic, semantic, and…

The speech intelligibility of 18 children with prelingual deafness was examined after using cochlear implants for an average of 3 years. The average speech intelligibility score of the nine children using oral communication was significantly higher than that of nine children using total communication. (DB)

Teachers of students with deafness (31 teachers following an oral approach and 93 following the Total Communication approach) were surveyed to examine work-related stress. The two groups did not differ in overall stress levels but did differ on two stress factors: institutional provision of technical and personnel assistance, and agreement with…

This paper reviews the historical development of Auditory-Verbal International, which was established as a nonprofit organization to achieve the goal of increasing availability and effectiveness of the auditory-verbal approach for individuals with hearing impairments. The group's position statement is presented, along with principles of…

This paper deals with the auditory-verbal therapy process as implemented with two children (ages three and seven) with hearing impairments, enrolled in the Auditory-Verbal Therapy Programme of North York (Ontario) General Hospital. The paper contains audiological information, long-term objectives, and a detailed lesson plan for each child. (JDD)

The handbook, in the format of an open letter to parents of hearing impaired (HI) children, responds to surveyed parent needs on parent concerns, books, resources, parent rights, and effectiveness of the aural/oral education method. Following identification of four major parent concerns such as increased awareness of the importance of the medical…

Undergraduates (N = 96), divided into 12 groups, first engaged in self-disclosure and consensus exercises and then were required to exchange personal feedback. Feedback was positive or negative in nature and delivered publicly or anonymously. Positive feedback was rated as more credible and produced greater cohesiveness. (Author)

A practitioner reflects on 30 years of work with parents of hearing-impaired children. She describes her own personal experiences, education, and professional development working directly with parents and babies, as a university professor, and as a school principal. She stresses the importance of parental participation for effective oral…

Principles of using Cued Speech with deaf children are discussed. Review of the literature suggests that Cued Speech has been unjustly criticized. Cued speech should be seen not as a method of communication, but rather as an intervention tool with application for both aural-oral and Total Communication programs. (Author/DB)

Tests 64 deaf students from oral and total communication settings to examine whether a deficiency in spontaneous strategy use accounts for their verbal short-term memory performance. Spontaneous rehearsal of both deaf samples seemed to emerge later than the hearing sample's and was inefficiently implemented and less effective in mediating recall…

This paper discusses the issue of oral versus sign language in educating people who are deaf, focusing on Hungary, which currently emphasizes oralism and discourages the use of Hungarian Sign Language. Teachers of people who are hearing impaired are trained to use the acoustic channel and view signing as an obstacle to the integration of deaf…

Two studies of the communication skills of orally educated, deaf elementary school children are reported. Severely and profoundly deaf children performed as well as hearing children on limited referential communication. Differences in performance were found among deaf children from three schools with different linguistic philosophies. (Author/DB)

Deaf children and hearing mothers using oral only communication spent significantly less time engaged in interaction than did mothers and children in the two groups using sign language or the hearing group. The major finding affirms the similarities between the deaf mother/deaf child pairs and the hearing mother/hearing child pairs. (Author)