The article summarizes information on assistive devices (hearing aids, cochlear implants, tactile aids, visual aids) and rehabilitation procedures (auditory training, speechreading, cued speech, and speech production) to aid the auditory learning of the hearing impaired.(DB)

This paper evaluates two commercially available educational software programs ("Bailey's Book House" and "Stickybear's Reading Room") to illustrate how they might be used to train or reinforce audition skills in students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Results suggest the value of multiple uses of educational software. (DB)

Natural language conversational samples were collected from hearing-impaired preschoolers who were either using cochlear implants, tactile aids, or hearing aids over a 33-month period. Children using cochlear implants increased their overall communicativeness, their breadth of functions, and their use of intelligible speech faster than other…

Seventeen children (ages 8-10) with hearing loss were tested on four types of tasks (speech perception, phonetic awareness, recall of word strings, and comprehension of sentences with complex syntax) and results were compared to controls. Subjects showed evidence of restricted access to acoustic information in the speech signal. (Contains…

This paper describes changes in speech perception performance of deaf children using cochlear implants, tactile aids, or conventional hearing aids over a three-year period. Eleven of the 13 children with cochlear implants were able to identify words on the basis of auditory consonant cues. Significant lipreading enhancement was also achieved with…

The purposes of this paper are to examine the degree of ethnic diversity that exists among children with hearing loss; to review how this affects implementation of auditory-based intervention for children with many needs; and to suggest ways that auditory-based therapists can respect and respond to diversity for the improvement of services to…

This paper, discussing use of electrical stimulation by postlingually deafened adults to supplement speechreading, focuses on: information conveyed by vision, acoustic information needed to resolve visual confusions, basic psychophysical abilities of cochlear implant patients, auditory-alone and audiovisual perception by cochlear-implant patients,…

Research is reviewed on auditory-visual speech perception of hearing-impaired individuals. The review focuses on: the effects of competing noise, filtering, age, stimulus and noise, and hearing loss on perceptual behavior; bisensory communication evaluation procedures; and remediation of bisensory perceptual problems through consonant recognition…

This paper describes components of the Nucleus 22 Channel Cochlear Implant System used with deaf children and adults. It discusses speech coding strategies, programming concepts, programming the device for children, trouble-shooting, and fitting an FM system to a speech processor. It reports data showing improved ability to use auditory…

A study compared continuous discourse tracking rates in eight children (ages 8-14) with hearing impairments and eight typical children using three competing noise conditions: classroom noise, videotaped classroom activity, and combined noise and visual activity. Statistical analyses showed no significant differences among tracking rates due to the…

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.…

This paper describes components of the Central Institute for the Deaf (Missouri) auditory learning program for children with assistive listening devices, including: (1) audiologic management of the sensory aids; (2) a device-specific curriculum, listing objectives in a developmental sequence; and (3) appropriate teaching activities for reaching…

Speech perception outcomes in young children with cochlear implants are affected by a number of variables including the age of implantation, duration of implantation, mode of communication, and the presence of a developmental delay or additional disability. The aim of this study is to examine the association between degree of developmental delay…