Worldwide, 15 million babies are "born too soon" every year (Blencowe et al., 2012; Howson et al., 2013). Remarkably, prematurity survival rates now exceed 93% across all countries. More than 360,000 preterm babies survived in the United States in 2020; 10% of all births (Blencowe et al., 2012; Howson et al., 2013). While this is an…

The objective of this study was to investigate the perceptual relevance of acoustic differences in vowels produced by 6 children between the ages of 9-13 years old with unilateral cochlear implants. Formant frequencies were estimated for 12 repetitions of vowels /hid/, /hed/, /haed/, /hud/, /hUd/, and /hAd/ produced by the children. The estimated…

Recent advances in videoconferencing technology have resulted in a substantial increase in the use of live videoconferencing--referred to here as telepractice--to diagnose and treat speech, language, and hearing disorders. There is growing support from professional organizations for use of this service delivery model, as videoconferencing…

For well over a century, individuals have sought new and efficient ways to communicate health-related information and provide medical services over distances. Often, this desire has sparked considerable innovation in technology and ushered in improved models of service delivery. Today, modern videoconferencing technology allows practitioners to…

With modern improvements to hearing aids and cochlear implant (CI) technology, and consequently improved access to speech, there has been greater emphasis on listening-based therapies for children with hearing loss, such as auditory-verbal therapy (AVT). Speech and language, speech perception in noise, and reading were evaluated before and after…

A longitudinal study reported positive speech and language outcomes for 29 children with hearing loss in an auditory-verbal therapy program (AVT group) (aged 2 to 6 years at start; mean PTA 79.39 dB HL) compared with a matched control group with typical hearing (TH group) at 9, 21, and 38 months after the start of the study. The current study…

This study compared how one typical 8-year old and two 8-year olds with profound deafness conveyed contrastive stress in their speech in simple declarative sentences. For the students with deafness, intensity measurements showed little variation across sentences and no intensity peaks corresponding to the syllables that should be contrastive.…

The vocalizations and speech production of 20 infants with hearing impairments were examined at three age levels: between 5-13 months, 2-5 years, and 5-10 years. Degree of hearing loss had a significant and moderately strong relationship with speech outcome at the second and third age levels. (Contains extensive references.) (Author/CR)

Production of 19 word-initial two-segment consonant clusters was examined in 12 children (ages 6-16) with cochlear implants, including 6 using oral communication and 6 using total communication. Results showed that 48% of the clusters were correctly produced (75% correct for oral communication users and 21% correct for total communication users).…

The Association Method is an instructional strategy currently being used with children with hearing loss, children with speech and language disorders, and children with reading disabilities. It is a systematic, incremental, phonetically based, multi-sensory approach designed to increase the understanding and use of spoken language; improve…