British Columbia (BC) is a vast province in Canada made up of several distinct geographic areas. Most of the province's population lives in a few metropolitan areas, with the greater Vancouver area being the largest. British Columbians living outside these areas must travel significant distances to see specialists of any kind. Treacherous winter…

State coordinators of early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) programs completed a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, or SWOT, analysis that examined 12 areas within state EHDI programs. Concerning periodic early childhood hearing screening, 47 coordinators listed 241 items and themes were identified within each SWOT…

It is recommended that auditory-verbal clinicians working with children with hearing impairments and their families use a battery of specific language tests when providing an early intervention program that focuses on language growth. These multiple measures should include norm-and criterion-referenced instruments that specifically measure…

This study surveyed 35 mothers of cochlear implant (CI) candidates or current users on the relative importance of various topics in a parent-targeted intervention program preceding and/or following cochlear implantation. Suggestions for an optimal intervention include use of a multidisciplinary team, information on many topics and services, and…

Seventeen children (ages 8-10) with hearing loss were tested on four types of tasks (speech perception, phonetic awareness, recall of word strings, and comprehension of sentences with complex syntax) and results were compared to controls. Subjects showed evidence of restricted access to acoustic information in the speech signal. (Contains…

A study examined the effects of age at implantation on the development of communication abilities in 106 early-implanted children. Results revealed significant improvement in communication skills over time. Children implanted prior to age 2 had significantly faster rates of receptive vocabulary and language development than later-implanted…

A study involving 20 children (ages 4-9) using cochlear implants compared the articulation of those who used oral communication only (n=10) and those who used total communication (TC). Results from the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation indicate those using only oral communication committed significantly fewer errors than TC users. (Contains…

A study examined the speech intelligibility of children (ages 1-15) with deafness who use hearing aids. Data revealed a strong significant trend toward higher intelligibility for children with more residual hearing, and a significant trend toward higher intelligibility for users of oral communication than those using total communication. (Contains…

A study examined language skills in 44 pediatric cochlear implant users. All participants received implants before age 6 and were programmed with state-of-the-art stimulation strategies (Continuous Interleaved Sampler or Spectral Peak) since the day of initial stimulation. Postimplantation language development proceeded at a pace that was not…

A study considered the validity of portions of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI) for 50 pediatric cochlear implant users (ages 1-6) who exceeded the age ranges for which these inventories were normed. Results indicate MCDI scores plus age could be used to obtain Reynell Developmental Language Scales scores. (Contains…

A study examined the relationship between parent word familiarity and the language development of pediatric cochlear implant users (ages 3- 8). Thirty-two parents rated their familiarity with 150 words. Results indicated a significant relationship between parents' ratings and children's receptive vocabulary and language abilities, as well as their…

A study investigated whether differences in working memory could account for variance in word recognition and receptive vocabulary skills of children (ages 5-16) using oral communication (n=32) and total communication (n=29). A contribution from working memory was observed only for the span tasks that incorporated an auditory processing component.…

Proposes a method of evaluating program efficacy based on data evaluating the school performance of 19 children, 14 with severe hearing losses, enrolled in an auditory/verbal early-intervention program. The evaluation indicated that 16 of the children were fully included in mainstream classrooms and 18 were using FM systems. (Author/CR)

Two speech teachers of young children at the New York School for the Deaf describe various ways in which they have used colorful bean bags modeled on holiday elements such as jack-o-laterns and valentines to stimulate language learning. (GW)

The Home Visiting and Parent Education Program at De Paul Institute in Pittsburgh takes the teacher into the home situation in an attempt to involve the entire family in integrating the deaf preschool child into his natural world. (Author)