There is a strong association between access to early intervention (EI) services by 6 months of age and improved speech and language outcomes for children with permanent hearing loss (PHL). This study identified factors impacting on age of engagement and timing of engagement in EI services by families of 377 children with PHL. This retrospective…

Along with early detection, early intervention (EI) is critical for children identified with hearing loss. Evidence indicates that many children with sensorineural hearing loss experience improved language abilities if EI services were initiated at an "early" age. The present study's objectives were to determine the impact of a state EI program on…

Anecdotal reports of fatigue after sustained speech-processing demands are common among adults with hearing loss; however, systematic research examining hearing loss-related fatigue is limited, particularly with regard to fatigue among children with hearing loss (CHL). Many audiologists, educators, and parents have long suspected that CHL…

Purpose: Although children with hearing loss (HL) can benefit from cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs), they often show language delays. Moreover, little is known about the mechanisms by which children with HL learn words. One mechanism by which typically hearing (TH) children learn words is by acquiring word learning biases such as the…

Interactive silences are important strategies that can be implemented by practitioners and parents of children with hearing loss who are learning a spoken language. Types of adult self-controlled pauses and evidence pertaining to the function of those pauses are discussed, followed by a review of advantages to justify implementation of these…

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are at risk for language and literacy delays, and parent--child book reading can contribute to developing early literacy foundations. Although many parents read with their children, some parents may be unsure how to utilize effective reading strategies to maximize literacy growth. This multiple case…

We aimed to determine the types of identities hearing parents construct when telling online stories about their children with hearing loss (HL) who use cochlear implants (CIs). To do so, we employed a qualitative design and sampled 20 different blogs United States origins and written by parents of children who use CIs. We then used thematic…

Hearing is one of the five senses. Hearing gives access to sounds in the world--people's voices, their words, a car horn blown in warning or as hello! When a child has a hearing loss, it is cause for immediate attention. That is because language and communication skills develop most rapidly in childhood, especially before the age of 3. When…

This study investigates consonant development in the spoken language of 269 children with hearing loss between 15 and 84 months of age. Children with mild, moderate, severe, and profound degrees of bilateral hearing loss, including those with cochlear implants, were evaluated. Speech samples from 885 different test sessions of 25-minute…

During this research study the "Self-Advocacy Assessment Tool for Preschool-Aged Children with Hearing Loss: Birth to Age 4" was developed, constructed, and evaluated. The study provides content, construct and internal consistency reliability and validity evidence. The Self-Advocacy Assessment Tool is the first tool specifically designed…

A 3-month intervention was conducted to enhance the sequential time perception and storytelling ability of young children with hearing loss. The children were trained to arrange pictorial episodes of temporal scripts and tell the stories they created. Participants (N = 34, aged 4-7 years) were divided into 2 groups based on whether their…

Purpose: The sibling relationship teaches children to navigate social interactions with their peers. However, the presence of an exceptionality, such as hearing loss, in one child can affect the dynamic of this relationship. This article examines quantitative and qualitative effects of having a brother or sister with a cochlear implant (CI) on…

Under federal guidelines, parents of school-aged children with hearing loss are required to attend an individualized education program (IEP) meeting on behalf of their child. However, it remains unclear how prepared hearing parents are to oversee development of IEPs that guarantee their children the best educational outcomes, as well as how much…

Deaf and hard of hearing children can face significant challenges developing the language and literacy skills needed to succeed in school and become self-sufficient adults. The federal government supports these children through the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) program, which awards grants to states to develop systems to screen…

The majority of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter referred to as "Aboriginal") people live in urban centres. Otitis media (OM) occurs at a younger age, prevalence is higher and hearing loss and other serious complications are more common in Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal children. Despite this, data on the…