The effect of telepractice on vocal turn-taking between a provider, children with cochlear implants, and caregivers: A preliminary report.

Objectives: To examine the effect of telepractice on vocal turn-taking between one clinical provider and children with cochlear implants and their caregivers during child-centered auditory rehabilitation intervention.

Methods: Seven dyads of children with cochlear implants (mean age 4:11 years) and their hearing mothers and one speech-language pathologist participated together in a telepractice session and an in-person intervention session. Dependent variables were vocalization rate, turn taking rate, rate of speech overlap per second, and between-speaker pause duration.

Prelinguistic Consonant Production and the Influence of Mouthing Before and After Cochlear Implantation.

Objectives: The goal of the study was to investigate prelinguistic consonant production and the influence of vocalizations that co-occurred with object mouthing on consonant production in infants with profound sensorineural hearing loss before and after cochlear implantation to advance knowledge of early speech development in infants with profound hearing loss.

Design: Participants were 43 infants, 16 infants with profound sensorineural hearing loss and 27 hearing infants. In the mixed longitudinal and cross-sectional design, infants with profound hearing loss and age-matched hearing infants participated before cochlear implantation, at an average age of 9.

Story hour at a family homeless center: contribution to graduate students' preparation and confidence in preliteracy skills.

Purpose: This study evaluated the potential benefit to graduate students' of participating in a service-learning program conducting a storybook reading program for children in a family homeless shelter.

Method: Ten graduate students in the second year of a two-year master's degree program in communication science and disorders participated in the storybook reading program. The graduate students engaged in reflective writing about their experiences and completed self-ratings of confidence in preliteracy skills before and after program participation.

Vocal imitation between mothers and their children with cochlear implants.

To better explain variation in language acquisition in children with hearing loss, this study examined vocal (e.g., vocalization) and lexical (e.

Exploring in Silence: Hearing and Deaf Infants Explore Objects Differently before Cochlear Implantation.

Infant development has rarely been informed by the behavior of infants with sensory differences despite increasing recognition that infant behavior itself creates sensory learning opportunities. The purpose of this study of object exploration was to compare the behavior of hearing and deaf infants, with and without cochlear implants, in order to identify the effects of profound sensorineural hearing loss on infant exploration before cochlear implantation, the behavioral effects of access to auditory feedback after cochlear implantation, and the sensory motivation for exploration behaviors performed by hearing infants as well. The results showed that 9-month-old deaf infants explored objects as often as hearing infants but they used systematically different approaches and less variation before compared to after cochlear implantation.

Vocal Turn-Taking Between Mothers and Their Children With Cochlear Implants.

Objectives: The primary objective of the study was to examine the occurrence and temporal structure of vocal turn-taking during spontaneous interactions between mothers and their children with cochlear implants (CI) over the first year after cochlear implantation as compared with interactions between mothers and children with normal hearing (NH).

Design: Mothers' unstructured play sessions with children with CI (n = 12) were recorded at 2 time points, 3 months (mean age 18.3 months) and 9 months (mean age 27.

What Mothers Do After Infants Vocalize: Implications for Vocal Development or Word Learning?

Purpose The goal of this study was to analyze verbal and nonverbal maternal response types following infant vocalizations in younger (ages 4-8 months) versus older (ages 10-14 months) infant groups and their potential implications for infant vocal development or word learning. Method Maternal response types that occurred within 3 s of infant vocalizations were examined in this cross-sectional study of naturalistic interactions in 35 mother-infant dyads. Response types were defined as vocally responsive to infant vocalizations (i.

Optimizing the Translational Value of Mouse Models of ALS for Dysphagia Therapeutic Discovery.

The goal of this study was to compare dysphagia phenotypes in low and high copy number (LCN and HCN) transgenic superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) mouse models of ALS to accelerate the discovery of novel and effective treatments for dysphagia and early amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis. Clinicopathological features of dysphagia were characterized in individual transgenic mice and age-matched controls utilizing videofluoroscopy in conjunction with postmortem assays of the tongue and hypoglossal nucleus. Quantitative PCR accurately differentiated HCN-SOD1 and LCN-SOD1 mice and nontransgenic controls.

Public Library Programs and Accommodations for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children in the United States†.

In today's public libraries, children's librarians are challenged to provide inclusive programming that welcomes all individuals, including deaf and hard-of-hearing children at risk for delayed reading and literacy development. This study, using quantitative survey data and qualitative interview methods, investigated the programs and accommodations public libraries provide for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, the impetus for providing these programs, and the training required. Nearly 500 public libraries in the United States with service areas greater than 100,000 patrons were invited to participate in an online survey.

Ordinary Interactions Challenge Proposals That Maternal Verbal Responses Shape Infant Vocal Development.

Purpose: This study tested proposals that maternal verbal responses shape infant vocal development, proposals based in part on evidence that infants modified their vocalizations to match mothers' experimentally manipulated vowel or consonant-vowel responses to most (i.e., 70%-80%) infant vocalizations.

Why repetition? Repetitive babbling, auditory feedback, and cochlear implantation.

This study investigated the reduplicated, or repetitive vocalizations of hearing infants and infants with profound hearing loss with and without cochlear implants using a new measure of repetition in order to address questions not only about the effects of cochlear implantation on repetitive babbling, but also about the reason repetitive vocalizations occur at all and why they emerge around 7 or 8 months of age in hearing infants. Participants were 16 infants with profound hearing loss and 27 hearing infants who participated at a mean age of 9.9 months and/or a mean age of 17.

Frequency of vocalization before and after cochlear implantation: dynamic effect of auditory feedback on infant behavior.

The motivation for infants' non-word vocalizations in the second half of the first year of life and later is unclear. This study of hearing infants and infants with profound hearing loss with and without cochlear implants addressed the hypothesis that vocalizations are primarily motivated by auditory feedback. Early access to cochlear implants has created unique conditions of auditory manipulation that permit empirical tests of relations between auditory perception and infant behavior.

Cochlear implantation at 12 months: Limitations and benefits for vocabulary production.

Objective: The purpose of this investigation was to learn the degree to which cochlear implantation at 12 months of age could reduce gaps in performance between hearing age and chronological age - that is, whether infants with access to cochlear implants at 12 months of age would be 12 months delayed, or less, in vocabulary production one year later.

Method: Baseline vocabulary production was measured by parent interview and direct observation approximately 4 months post cochlear implant (CI) activation, and again 12 months after CI activation using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences.

Results: Infants produced few if any words shortly after CI activation.

Synchrony, complexity and directiveness in mothers' interactions with infants pre- and post-cochlear implantation.

This study investigated effects of profound hearing loss on mother-infant interactions before and after cochlear implantation with a focus on maternal synchrony, complexity, and directiveness. Participants included two groups of mother-infant dyads: 9 dyads of mothers and infants with normal hearing; and 9 dyads of hearing mothers and infants with profound hearing loss. Dyads were observed at two time points: Time 1, scheduled to occur before cochlear implantation for infants with profound hearing loss (mean age=13.

Hearing experience and receptive vocabulary development in deaf children with cochlear implants.

This study investigated receptive vocabulary delay in deaf children with cochlear implants. Participants were 23 children with profound hearing loss, ages 6-14 years, who received a cochlear implant between ages 1.4 and 6 years.

Perspectives on multisensory experience and cognitive development in infants with cochlear implants.

Infants learn about their environment through sensory exploration, acquiring knowledge that is important for cognitive development. However, little is known about the sensory exploration of infants with profound hearing loss before or after they receive cochlear implants. This paper reviews aspects of sensory perception and cognitive development in hearing infants, discusses the implications of delayed access to auditory information for multisensory perception and cognitive development in infants who use cochlear implants, and suggests several new directions for research addressing multisensory exploration and cognitive development in infants with cochlear implants.

Mean Length of Utterance before words and grammar: longitudinal trends and developmental implications of infant vocalizations.

This study measured longitudinal change in six parameters of infant utterances (i.e. number of sounds, CV syllables, supraglottal consonants, and repetitions per utterance, temporal duration, and seconds per sound), investigated previously unexplored characteristics of repetition (i.

Managing referrals for children with receptive language delay.

This study investigates relations between language and cognitive scores in children with receptive language (RL) delay and suggests guidelines for referral for cognitive testing. This retrospective review of the test scores of 41 children, ages 17 to 76 months (mean = 37.7 months), focuses on examining associations between RL and cognitive scores.

Visual-motor integration skills of prelingually deaf children: implications for pediatric cochlear implantation.

Objective: To investigate visual-motor integration (VI) skills of prelingually deaf (PLD) children before and after cochlear implantation (CI) and investigate correlations with spoken-language and related processing measures.

Design: Study 1 was a longitudinal study in which VI was tested preimplant. Study 2 was a cross sectional study of school-age children who used a CI for >2 years.

Neuropsychological correlates of vocabulary, reading, and working memory in deaf children with cochlear implants.

The performance of deaf children with cochlear implants was assessed using measures standardized on hearing children. To investigate nonverbal cognitive and sensorimotor processes associated with postimplant variability, five selected sensorimotor and visuospatial subtests from A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment (NEPSY) were compared with standardized vocabulary, reading, and digit span measures. Participants were 26 deaf children, ages 6-14 years, who received a cochlear implant between ages 1 and 6 years; duration of implant use ranged from 3 to 11 years.

The Influence of Mouthing on Infant Vocalization.

Although vocalization and mouthing are behaviors frequently performed by infants, little is known about the characteristics of vocalizations that occur with objects, hands, or fingers in infants' mouths. The purpose of this research was to investigate characteristics of vocalizations associated with mouthing in 6- to 9-month-old infants during play with a primary caregiver. Results suggest that mouthing may influence the phonetic characteristics of vocalizations by introducing vocal tract closure and variation in consonant production.

Infant vocal-motor coordination: precursor to the gesture-speech system?

This study was designed to provide a general picture of infant vocal-motor coordination and test predictions generated by Iverson and Thelen's (1999) model of the development of the gesture-speech system. Forty-seven 6- to 9-month-old infants were videotaped with a primary caregiver during rattle and toy play. Results indicated an age-related increase in frequency of vocal-motor coordination, greater coordination with arm (specifically right arm) than leg or torso movements, and a temporal pattern similar to that in adult gesture-speech coproductions.