The Infant Monitor of vocal Production (IMP) was conceived as an educational strategy to help parents understand the nature and pace of their baby's vocal development following neonatal diagnosis and amplification for hearing loss. The potential for other clinical applications emerged with use. The instrument presents as a series of…

This study explores the impact of bimodal bilingual parental input on the communication and language development of a young deaf child. The participants in this case study were a severe-to-profoundly deaf boy and his hearing parents, who were enrolled in a bilingual (English and Australian Sign Language) homebased early intervention programme. The…

Studies carried out to support the existence of a critical period for language acquisition have concentrated mainly on the case of being in total deprivation from language contact, and in particular deprivation from auditory input in the entire time span before puberty. While arguing for a useful distinction between early and late critical…

Research has shown how cochlear implants (CIs), in children with hearing impairments, have improved speech perception and production, but very little is known about the children's pragmatic language development. During a 4-year longitudinal study of three children with CIs, certain aspects of pragmatic language development were observed in free…

A common misconception about families in the UK who choose to participate in an Auditory Verbal (AV) approach for their child with hearing impairment, is that they are uniformly from affluent backgrounds. It is asserted that the good spoken language outcomes in these children are a product of the child's social background and family's values…

The notion that young children form and test hypotheses about early print is well established in relation to children from different cultures who use different languages. This study demonstrates that this also obtains for young deaf children still in the early stages of developing spoken language. Data collected from the homes of 13 deaf children…

This paper assesses the expressive spoken grammar skills of young deaf children using cochlear implants who are beginning formal education, compares it with that achieved by normally hearing children and considers possible implications for educational management. Spoken language grammar was assessed, three years after implantation, in 45 children…

In the present study, language development of Dutch children with a cochlear implant (CI) in a bilingual educational setting and Flemish children with a CI in a dominantly monolingual educational setting is compared. In addition, we compared the development of spoken language with the development of sign language in Dutch children. Eighteen…

Providing unbiased data concerning the outcomes of particular intervention methods is imperative if professionals and parents are to assimilate information which could contribute to an "informed choice". An evaluation of Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) was conducted using a formal assessment of spoken language as an outcome measure. Spoken language…

Researchers, the Deaf community, teachers of deaf children and speech and language therapists all share a concern about how to improve deaf children's written language skills. One part of literacy is story writing or narrative. A finding from a small number of studies is that children exposed to sign language from early childhood onwards achieve…

Children with hearing loss and their families are now presenting for early intervention support and guidance at increasingly younger ages. At present there is a paucity of research that informs teachers about early language development in the child with hearing loss. Di-EL First Words (Di-EL) is a diary technique through which parents record their…