Teaching Caregivers to Implement the Caregivers Optimizing Achievement of Children With Hearing Loss (COACH) Intervention.

Purpose: This study examined the effectiveness of Caregivers Optimizing Achievement of Children With Hearing Loss (COACH), an intervention in which parents were taught naturalistic interaction strategies that addressed the unique linguistic input needs of their young children with hearing loss.

Method: A single-subject multiple-baseline across-behaviors design was used with four caregiver-child dyads to determine the effects of COACH training on caregivers' use of the COACH language facilitation strategies and on their children's language abilities.

Results: A functional relation was demonstrated between teaching of strategies and caregivers' use of the strategies across three dyads with slower, consistent changes observed in a fourth dyad.

Language Exposure for Preterm Infants is Reduced Relative to Fetuses.

Objective: To assess changes and deficits in language and auditory exposures consequent to preterm birth and neonatal intensive care unit stay compared with exposures in utero among typically developing fetuses.

Study Design: We analyzed over 23 000 hours of auditory exposure data in a cohort study of 27 typically-developing fetuses and 24 preterm infants. Extrauterine exposures for fetuses were captured by having pregnant women wear 24-hour audio recording devices.

Evaluation of Parent-Researcher Agreement on the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview.

Purpose Parent report was compared to judgments made by a trained researcher to determine the utility of the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview (VDLI) for monitoring development of vocal behaviors in very young children. Method Parents of 40 typically developing children, ages 6-21 months, provided full-day naturalistic audio recordings of their children's vocalizations after completing the VDLI. Six 5-min segments of highly voluble periods were selected from each recording and were analyzed, coded, and scored by the researcher.

Beliefs and Self-Efficacy of Parents of Young Children with Hearing Loss.

The purpose of this study was to learn more about the beliefs and self-efficacy of parents of young children with hearing loss. Seventy-two parents completed the Scale of Parental Involvement and Self-Efficacy-Revised (SPISE-R), which queries parents about their child's hearing device use and their perceptions of their own beliefs, knowledge, confidence, and actions pertaining to supporting their child's auditory access and spoken language development. Two beliefs were identified that related to parents' action scores and one belief was identified that related to children's hearing device use.

Using Technology to Monitor Hearing Device Use and Linguistic Environments: Early Intervention Providers' Perspectives.

To improve outcomes for children with hearing loss, early intervention professionals must work with families to optimize children's hearing device use and the linguistic and auditory features of children's environments. Two technologies with potential use in monitoring these domains are data logging and Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology. This study, which surveyed early intervention providers, had two objectives: (a) to determine whether providers' experiences, perspectives, and current practices indicated there was a need for tools to better monitor these domains, and (b) to gain a better understanding of providers' experiences with and perspectives on use of the two technologies.

Aided Hearing Moderates the Academic Outcomes of Children With Mild to Severe Hearing Loss.

Objectives: There are very limited data regarding the spoken language and academic outcomes of children with mild to severe hearing loss (HL) during the elementary school years, and the findings of these studies are inconsistent. None of these studies have examined the possible role of aided hearing in these outcomes. This study used a large cohort of children to examine these outcomes and in particular to examine whether aided hearing moderates the effect of HL with regard to these outcomes.

Effects of an Intervention Designed to Increase Toddlers' Hearing Aid Use.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Ears On, an intervention designed to increase toddlers' use of hearing devices. A single-case, multiple-baseline design across participants was used with three parent-child dyads who demonstrated low hearing aid use despite enrollment in traditional early intervention services. Data logging technology was used to objectively measure hearing aid use.

Validation of a Parent Report Tool for Monitoring Early Vocal Stages in Infants.

Purpose Tracking of infants' progression through early vocal stages supports the identification of children at risk for language delays and guides early intervention for children with disabilities. However, few clinical tools are available to support systematic assessment of infants' early vocal development. This study sought to develop and conduct a preliminary evaluation of the validity of a parent report tool designed for this purpose, the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview (VDLI).

Early Literacy Predictors and Second-Grade Outcomes in Children Who Are Hard of Hearing.

This study contrasted the early literacy outcomes of children who are hard of hearing (CHH) with children with normal hearing (CNH). At age 5, prereading skills of oral language, phonological processing, and print knowledge were examined in CHH (N = 180) and CNH (N = 80). The CHH had poorer oral language and phonological processing abilities than the CNH but comparable knowledge of print.

False Belief Development in Children Who Are Hard of Hearing Compared With Peers With Normal Hearing.

Purpose: This study investigates false belief (FB) understanding in children who are hard of hearing (CHH) compared with children with normal hearing (CNH) at ages 5 and 6 years and at 2nd grade. Research with this population has theoretical significance, given that the early auditory-linguistic experiences of CHH are less restricted compared with children who are deaf but not as complete as those of CNH.

Method: Participants included CHH and CNH who had completed FB tasks as part of a larger multicenter, longitudinal study on outcomes of children with mild-to-severe hearing loss.

Service Delivery to Children With Mild Hearing Loss: Current Practice Patterns and Parent Perceptions.

Purpose: This study investigates clinical practice patterns and parent perception of intervention for children with mild hearing loss (HL).

Method: Ages at and delays between service delivery steps (first diagnostic evaluation, confirmation of HL, hearing aid [HA] fitting, entry into early intervention) were investigated for 113 children with mild HL. Comparisons were made to children with moderate-to-severe HL.

Gesture Use in 14-Month-Old Toddlers With Hearing Loss and Their Mothers' Responses.

Purpose: This study examined the gesture use of 14-month-old toddlers with hearing loss (HL) and mothers' responses to children's early gesture use. Comparisons were made to symbolic language and to dyads in which the toddler had normal hearing (NH).

Method: Participants were 25 mother-toddler dyads in which the child had HL and a socioeconomic-status matched group of 23 mother-toddler dyads in which the child had NH.

Assessing Vocal Development in Infants and Toddlers Who Are Hard of Hearing: A Parent-Report Tool.

The main purpose of the current investigation was to determine whether the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview-Experimental Version (VDLI-E) was sensitive to variation in the vocal development of infants and toddlers who are hard of hearing. The VDLI-E is an interactive parent interview that uses audio samples of authentic infant vocalizations to make targeted vocal behaviors clear and understandable to parents without the need for technical terms, verbal descriptions, or adult modeling of infant productions. The VDLI-E was found to be sensitive to age and hearing and was related to performance on concurrent measures of early auditory skills, expressive vocabulary, and overall expressive language abilities.

Language Outcomes in Young Children with Mild to Severe Hearing Loss.

Objectives: This study examined the language outcomes of children with mild to severe hearing loss during the preschool years. The longitudinal design was leveraged to test whether language growth trajectories were associated with degree of hearing loss and whether aided hearing influenced language growth in a systematic manner. The study also explored the influence of the timing of hearing aid fitting and extent of use on children's language growth.

Quantity and Quality of Caregivers' Linguistic Input to 18-Month and 3-Year-Old Children Who Are Hard of Hearing.

Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to examine the quantity and quality of caregiver talk directed to children who are hard of hearing (CHH) compared with children with normal hearing (CNH). For the CHH only, the study explored how caregiver input changed as a function of child age (18 months versus 3 years), which child and family factors contributed to variance in caregiver linguistic input at 18 months and 3 years, and how caregiver talk at 18 months related to child language outcomes at 3 years.

Design: Participants were 59 CNH and 156 children with bilateral, mild-to-severe hearing loss.

Automated Vocal Analysis of Children With Hearing Loss and Their Typical and Atypical Peers.

Objectives: This study investigated automatic assessment of vocal development in children with hearing loss compared with children who are typically developing, have language delays, and have autism spectrum disorder. Statistical models are examined for performance in a classification model and to predict age within the four groups of children.

Design: The vocal analysis system analyzed 1913 whole-day, naturalistic acoustic recordings from 273 toddlers and preschoolers comprising children who were typically developing, hard of hearing, language delayed, or autistic.

The influence of hearing aids on the speech and language development of children with hearing loss.

IMPORTANCE Hearing loss (HL) in children can be deleterious to their speech and language development. The standard of practice has been early provision of hearing aids (HAs) to moderate these effects; however, there have been few empirical studies evaluating the effectiveness of this practice on speech and language development among children with mild-to-severe HL. OBJECTIVE To investigate the contributions of aided hearing and duration of HA use to speech and language outcomes in children with mild-to-severe HL.

Speech sound production in 2-year-olds who are hard of hearing.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to (a) compare the speech sound production abilities of 2-year-old children who are hard of hearing (HH) to children with normal hearing (NH), (b) identify sources of risk for individual children who are HH, and (c) determine whether speech sound production skills at age 2 were predictive of speech sound production skills at age 3.

Method: Seventy children with bilateral, mild-to-severe hearing loss who use hearing aids and 37 age- and socioeconomic status-matched children with NH participated. Children's speech sound production abilities were assessed at 2 and 3 years of age.

Linguistic input, electronic media, and communication outcomes of toddlers with hearing loss.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to examine the quantity of adult words, adult-child conversational turns, and electronic media in the auditory environments of toddlers who are hard of hearing (HH) and to examine whether these factors contributed to variability in children's communication outcomes.

Design: Participants were 28 children with mild to severe hearing loss. Full-day recordings of children's auditory environments were collected within 6 months of their second birthdays by using Language ENvironment Analysis technology.

Quantity of parental language in the home environments of hard-of-hearing 2-year-olds.

Automated analyses of full-day recordings were used to determine whether young children who are hard-of-hearing (HH) received similar levels of exposure to adult words and conversational interactions as age-matched peers with normal-hearing (NH). Differences in adult input between children in this study and in a normative database were considered. Finally, factors were examined that may have contributed to individual differences in the input characteristics of families.

Phonological awareness and print knowledge of preschool children with cochlear implants.

Purpose: To determine whether preschool-age children with cochlear implants have age-appropriate phonological awareness and print knowledge and to examine the relationships of these skills with related speech and language abilities.

Method: The sample comprised 24 children with cochlear implants (CIs) and 23 peers with normal hearing (NH), ages 36 to 60 months. Children's print knowledge, phonological awareness, language, speech production, and speech perception abilities were assessed.

Relationships between speech perception abilities and spoken language skills in young children with hearing loss.

The goal of this study was to examine the relationships between scores obtained from measures of speech perception and language in a group of young children with hearing loss (HL). Eighteen children (mean age = 4.3 years) and their mothers participated in this study.

Literacy skills in children with cochlear implants: the importance of early oral language and joint storybook reading.

The goal of this study was to longitudinally examine relationships between early factors (child and mother) that may influence children's phonological awareness and reading skills 3 years later in a group of young children with cochlear implants (N = 16). Mothers and children were videotaped during two storybook interactions, and children's oral language skills were assessed using the "Reynell Developmental Language Scales, third edition." Three years later, phonological awareness, reading skills, and language skills were assessed using the "Phonological Awareness Test," the "Woodcock-Johnson-III Diagnostic Reading Battery," and the "Oral Written Language Scales.