The tendency toward early diagnosis and intervention for children with hearing loss requires diagnostic tools to assess and monitor early development. When providing intervention to young children with hearing loss, professionals need to be aware not only of speech and language milestones but also to monitor auditory development. Auditory skills are the basis for spoken
Music can positively affect a child’s whole development since it allows them to develop a wide range of skills. These include communication, listening, language, cognitive, fine and gross motor, social and emotional, and creative skills. For children who use cochlear implants, music may also provide additional benefits. Higher perceptual demands and greater precision are required
Early enrollment in family-centered intervention contributes to positive outcomes in language development for infants with hearing loss. However, a lack of resources in various health services and regions means that not all families begin benefiting from rehabilitation services after the diagnosis of their child’s hearing loss. Group cochlear implant rehabilitation support for babies and their
How can I know whether a child hears a sound well enough to identify it? Which speech sounds do children typically master earliest following implantation? Is it ‘normal’ for a three-year-old to drop the final consonants in words? The Building Blocks of Speech is a friendly ready-reference tool that can help answer questions like these
The earlier a child with hearing loss and their family can begin intervention, the better for the child’s long-term communication outcomes. However rehabilitation professionals may feel overwhelmed and underprepared when it comes to supporting babies in therapy. Babies can be difficult to manage in the therapy room and supporting this population requires a
Newborn hearing screening and early intervention have improved the spoken language outcomes for children with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Children diagnosed early are presenting at school with significantly larger vocabularies than those diagnosed later, and those diagnosed early tend to have vocabularies almost as large as those of their hearing peers. Despite these improvements, phonological awareness
