Using Family-Centered Practices to Increase Language Access for Multilingual Deaf or Hard of Hearing Children

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing may experience language deprivation in the early years that impacts long-term communication and educational outcomes. Fortunately, family engagement in the early childhood years has been shown to increase outcomes for young learners, and the standards for early childhood family engagement align with best practices for teaching children who are deaf or hard of hearing from multilingual families. Best practices for early childhood education, deaf or hard of hearing education, and multilingual education all place the family at the forefront with a strong belief that family is the first and best teacher for their child. The purpose of the chapter is to present the alignment of family centered practices across early childhood, deaf or hard of hearing, and multilingual education literature and present family centered collaboration strategies to increase early childhood language access for young multilingual children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Discussion of Issues Related to Assessment of Signed or Spoken Language Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This chapter is a joint discussion of key items presented in Chapters 4.1 and 4.2 related to the assessment of deaf and hearing children on the autism spectrum . From these chapters it becomes apparent that a number of aspects associated with signed language assessment are relevant to spoken language assessment. For example, there are several precautions to bear in mind about language assessments obtained via an interpreter. Some of these precautions apply solely to D/HH children, while others are applicable to assessments with hearing children in multilingual contexts. Equally, there are some aspects of spoken language assessment that can be applied to signed language assessment. These include the importance of assessing pragmatic language skills, assessing multiple areas of language development, differentiating between ASD and other developmental disorders, and completing the language evaluation within a developmental framework. The authors conclude with suggestions for both spoken and signed language assessment.

Design of Signed Language Tests for Deaf L1 Children

Recent changes in the earlier diagnosis of deafness and improved amplification options have meant that deaf children increasingly have better opportunities to develop spoken language. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of children continue to use signed language as a first language (L1), including deaf and hearing children in deaf signing families and deaf children in hearing families where families use signed language in the home. For both groups, mastery of sign language as an L1 is important because it paves the way to communication and also because it provides the basis for development of spoken language, in either its oral or written form, as a second language (L2). It is crucial that signed language development proceeds in an age-appropriate manner, and assessments of signed language are therefore important to ensure that this is the case. However, the development of effective tests of signed language acquisition is not without challenges. This chapter presents these challenges and other issues and gives examples of how available tests seek to overcome them.

Discussion of Issues Related to Assessing Signed or Spoken Language in Children with Developmental Language Disorder

Issues regarding assessment of the deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) child with developmental language disorder (DLD) have implications for the assessment of the child with DLD who is not D/HH. Of note are suggestions regarding literacy, the potential for semantic fluency assessment to contribute to the identification of DLD, the use of standardized protocols to support assessment at the conversational level, and the necessary skills of those completing assessments. Similarly, issues in assessment and identification of children with DLD who are not D/HH have implications for practice with children who are D/HH. These include the shift from exclusionary approaches to identification and recognition of co-occurring conditions, addressing the impact of development over time and considering the contribution of dynamic assessment. This chapter is a joint discussion of key items related to the assessment of deaf and hearing children with a developmental language disorder that were presented in Chapters 5.1 and 5.2.

Assessing Signed Language Skills in Bi-/Multilingual, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

Providing appropriate and evidence-based services for linguistically diverse, bilingual, and multimodal deaf and/or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) children is an important aspect of education and intervention programs. The increasing linguistic diversity of D/HH children creates challenges for professionals who need to understand and document these children’s linguistic systems through appropriate and informative assessment of children’s speech, and spoken language, and/or sign language skills. However, assessment can prove challenging, particularly when a child’s language environment contains more than one language in one or more modality. In this chapter, areas of assessment relevant to bilingual D/HH children are discussed to guide practitioners’ decisions on selecting and using appropriate assessment materials and approaches. Special focus is given to assessment considerations that can inform practice when assessment resources for a particular language are not available.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Listening Effort in Young Children with Cochlear Implants

Very early bilateral implantation is thought to significantly reduce the attentional effort required to acquire spoken language, and consequently offer a profound improvement in quality of life. Despite the early intervention, however, auditory and communicative outcomes in children with cochlear implants remain poorer than in hearing children. The distorted auditory input via the cochlear implants requires more auditory attention resulting in increased listening effort and fatigue. Listening effort and fatigue may critically affect attention to speech, and in turn language processing, which may help to explain the variation in language and communication abilities. However, measuring attention to speech and listening effort is demanding in infants and very young children. Three objective techniques for measuring listening effort are presented in this paper that may address the challenges of testing very young and/or uncooperative children with cochlear implants: pupillometry, electroencephalography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy. We review the studies of listening effort that used these techniques in paediatric populations with hearing loss, and discuss potential benefits of the systematic evaluation of listening effort in these populations.

Benefits of Parent Training in the Rehabilitation of Deaf or Hard of Hearing Children of Hearing Parents: A Systematic Review

The present study is a systematic review on the effectiveness of Parent Training (PT) and coaching in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) rehabilitation programs which reviews and synthesizes the existing body of evidence to assess the benefits of these programs in enhancing parents’ sensitivity, responsivity and promoting language development in DHH children during the first years after HA fitting or CI activation. Five published studies met the Population, Intervention, Comparison and Outcomes (PICO) inclusion criteria and were eligible to be included, but heterogeneity in terms of the study design, interventions and outcomes did not allow for performing a meta-analysis. All included studies shared the view that a parent’s learning is a circular (rather than frontal) process, and the results appear promising in terms of enhancing parents’ responsiveness and promoting DHH child language development. Nevertheless, the available evidence was judged to not be robust enough due to limitations in the studies’ designs. Further high-quality evidence is needed to evaluate the true degree of clinical value and the cost effectiveness of PT programs aimed at increasing parents’ responsiveness to their DHH children.

Pathologies of the hearing aid under the influence of global climate change and ecology

This article discusses the pathological changes of the hearing aid in connection with the deterioration of the environmental situation around the world, presents the psychophysical features that deal with the struggle of children with hearing impairment (hard of hearing and deaf). The method of physical education in the course of classes in the wrestling section for the adaptation and harmonious physical development of hard-of-hearing children is proposed and investigated. In our opinion, exercises in wrestling contribute to the development of a number of many valuable physical and psychological qualities that are necessary for a child with hearing impairment. The hypothesis of the study is based on the assumption that the inclusion of special developed methods for wrestling will allow to achieve significant results in a short time in children with hearing impairment. The use of wrestling exercises allows you to maximize the development of the functions of these analyzers for deaf children to more effectively participate in the compensation of lost qualities as a result of impaired hearing aid.

Does Phonological Complexity Provide a Good Index of Language Disorder in Children With Cochlear Implants?

Purpose Phonological complexity is known to be a good index of developmental language disorder (DLD) in normal-hearing children, who have major difficulties on some complex structures. Some deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) present a profile that evokes DLD, with persistent linguistic difficulties despite good audiological and environmental conditions. However, teasing apart what is related to auditory deficit or to language disorder remains complex. Method We compared the performance of three groups of school-age children, 33 children with CI, 22 with DLD, and 24 with typical development, on a nonword repetition (NWR) task based on phonological complexity. Children with CI were studied regarding their linguistic profile, categorized in four subgroups ranging from excellent to very poor performance. Influence of syllable length and phonological structures on the results of all the children were explored. Results The NWR task correctly distinguished children with DLD from typically developing children, and also children with CI with the poorest linguistic performance from other children with CI. However, most complex phonological structures did not reliably identify children with CI displaying a profile similar to that of children with DLD because these structures were difficult for all of the children with CI. The simplest phonological structures were better at detecting persistent language difficulties in children with CI, as they were challenging only for the children with the poorest language outcomes. Conclusions The most complex phonological structures are not good indices of language disorder in children with CI. Phonological complexity represents a gradient of difficulty that affects normal-hearing and deaf children differently.