In "The Relation of Language to Mental Development and of Speech to Language Teaching," S.G. Davidson displayed several timeless insights into the role of speech in developing language and reasons for using speech as the basis for instruction for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. His understanding that speech includes more than merely…

Acquisition of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, a key concept of the alphabetic principle, was examined in young children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) using a semantic association strategy embedded in two interventions, the Children's Early Intervention and Foundations for Literacy. Single-subject design experiments using multiple…

Family and community interactions provide important opportunities for facilitating the integration of children and youth with hearing loss, yet these environments have received little research attention. In this study, facilitators and barriers to integration associated with the social milieus of young people with hearing loss were identified.…

The majority of orally educated children with hearing loss are receiving their schooling in inclusive settings. Nevertheless, there is little recent research examining their integration experiences. A series of 10 focus groups with young people with hearing loss, their parents and itinerant teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students were used…

The purpose of this study was to validate competencies necessary for effective work in early intervention with infants and toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing. These were developed and implemented in the context of a graduate professional preparation program in early intervention in deaf education. This interdisciplinary, family-centered…

Fourteen orally communicating children (ages 7-14) with hearing impairments were able to provide story retellings following repeated reading of two stories and role-playing of one of the stories. Results showed the children were capable of narrative production and that sophistication and complexity of retellings improved with role-play. (Contains…

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…

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…

Production of 19 word-initial two-segment consonant clusters was examined in 12 children (ages 6-16) with cochlear implants, including 6 using oral communication and 6 using total communication. Results showed that 48% of the clusters were correctly produced (75% correct for oral communication users and 21% correct for total communication users).…

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 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.…

A language assessment procedure was used with spontaneous spoken and written language samples of 13 orally trained children with hearing loss in integrated classrooms in two Israeli elementary schools. Results revealed significant differences between spoken and written language samples of these children in various correct syntactic structures,…

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…

Spoken language of 24 teachers and 131 hearing impaired students (6, 10, and 14-year levels) were analyzed for sentence length and complexity. Results revealed that the oral-alone (OA) teachers in OA institutions created richer language environments and helped children display relatively enhanced oral linguistic growth compared to laissez faire…

The article focuses on the various dimensions of the auditory-oral track which features the auditory-oral method of instruction for hearing impaired children. The author stresses the Alexander Graham Bell Association's commitment to auditory-oral options for deaf children and youth. (SB)