The purpose of this study was to examine vowel production in 7- to 12-month-old infants with hearing loss. Fifty-four infants were divided into three groups according to degree of hearing loss (mild-to-moderate, moderately severe-to-severe, profound), and their vocalizations were phonetically transcribed from 30-minute videotaped samples. These…

The internal reliability and concurrent validity of the Play Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) was compared to that of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory with 170 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers. The PAQ was found to be a useful nonverbal tool that assesses symbolic play behaviors and demonstrates a parallel development with…

This study, with 180 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers grouped into four age ranges, found highly significant interrelationships among the four categories of play and the four aspects of communicative development studied. The development of autosymbolic play, age of hearing loss identification, and symbolic object distribution accounted…

A study involving 113 children (ages 24-37 months) with hearing impairments found expressive vocabulary was related to the child's age, the age of identification of the child's hearing loss (before or after 6 months), the child's cognitive quotient, and the presence or absence of one or more additional disabilities. (Contains extensive…

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…

The vocalizations and speech production of 20 infants with hearing impairments were examined at three age levels: between 5-13 months, 2-5 years, and 5-10 years. Degree of hearing loss had a significant and moderately strong relationship with speech outcome at the second and third age levels. (Contains extensive references.) (Author/CR)

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…

A study investigated the relationship between speech production and several demographic and developmental factors in 147 children (ages 14-60 months) with hearing impairments. Significant predictors of speech intelligibility and phonetic inventory included the child's age, expressive language ability, degree of hearing loss, mode of communication,…

This article presents information about the auditory and speech development of infants with normal hearing and those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Methods of assessing hearing, evidence of auditory learning prior to birth, behavior assessment procedures, hearing aid use, and early identification and speech development are discussed. (Contains…

A study involving 21 toddlers with hearing impairments and 21 typical toddlers and their mothers found that child emotional availability made significant positive predictors of language gain. Maternal emotional availability, however, made significantly greater positive predictors of child language gain for children with hearing impairments than…

A study involving 48 hearing mothers and their 2-year-old children with and without hearing impairments found mothers with children with hearing impairments touched each other more and that, unlike hearing dyads, the presence of material hostility was related to a decrease in the number of maternal and child touches. (Contains references.)…

Studies of the written language of students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing addressed, among other topics, level of reading skills, development of language skills after age 12, and evidence of a critical age for language learning. Data collection methods, research outcomes, and an overview of other articles in the theme issue are discussed. (CR)

The compositions of 49 students (ages 10-14) with deafness or hearing impairments and 49 typical students were compared to investigate the frequency and proportional distribution of written-language variables. Differences were found between the strategies chosen by the students with deafness or hearing impairments in both syntax and semantics and…

Discusses three studies: (1) the effectiveness of semantic analyses of written narratives of students with hearing losses in determining language ability; (2) written-language characteristics of writers matched by reading abilities alone and matched by reading ability and age; and (3) written-language characteristics of writers with hearing…

This introduction to Section 1, Part 2 of the theme issue discusses a study that investigated the story-grammar propositions of students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Results found that over 50% of the students could not produce the minimal components of a good story. The processes of story production are explained, including schemata…