Faculty of Education - Theses

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End date: 2019 × Type: Masters Research thesis × Subject: Education × Subject: Hearing impaired children × Subject: Study and teaching ×

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    The communicative interactions of hearing impaired students with hearing peers and regular teachers
    O'Connell, Annemarie ( 2001)
    This project examined the levels of control used in interaction by regular teachers and normally hearing peers with mainstreamed hearing impaired students. The communicative interaction of thirteen students; ten normally hearing and three hearing impaired, and their teacher was observed. Observations were recorded and then analysed based on the characteristics of communication developed by Wood.D, Wood.H, Griffiths.A & Howarthl (1986). The interactions experienced by hearing impaired students are important to the development of their communicative competence. It is through interaction with more mature users of language that communicative development takes place (Wood, Wood, Griffiths & Howarth,1986). The literature suggests that the hearing-impaired student experience high levels of control in interactions with others, in particular from their parents and teachers. Webster (1986) used the expression that mothers of deaf students 'command' the child. High control does not allow the hearing-impaired child freedom in response, or the development of extended communication acts in which both partners, can participate, learn and share responsibility. Both partners, parents and children, need to search for meaning in their communication with each other (Webster, 1986). It is through accessing meaning that language makes sense. Paul (1994) suggests that hearing impaired students are exposed to a lower quality of oral communication because they are labelled as deaf. Activities, such as speech or listening training, often take the place of meaningful conversation. The data suggests little difference in the level of control used by teachers when interacting with hearing and hearing impaired students. Similarly, there was little difference found with the level of control used by hearing students in their interactions with either normally hearing of hearing impaired peers. Interactions were short involving few exchanges. The characteristics of the language used consisted of mainly wh type questions, personal contributions, instructions and gesture. The information gathered would suggest that the input to interaction in this regular mainstream setting are not consistent with research of parent -child interaction and pre-school settings and provide opportunity for interaction and promotion or development of communicative skills.
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    The emergence of consonants in severe to profoundly hearing impaired pre-school aged children using hearing aids or cochlear implant
    Sanna, Sarina ( 1997)
    The Nucleus 22 Electrode Cochlear Implant is being implanted in young, severe to profound hearing impaired children with the anticipation that spontaneous speech production will develop more in line with what is expected in normal hearing children This study investigated the early emergence of consonantal sounds in the spontaneous speech production of two groups of pre school aged children. The first group consisted of five children implanted with the Nucleus 22 Electrode Cochlear Implant and using the Multipeak Speech Processor (MSP). The second group of five children wore electronic hearing aids and had at least some aided thresholds in the speech spectrum. The consonantal inventories of each subject, collected over a thirteen month period, were compared within the subject groups, between the subject groups and also to literature discussing consonantal emergence in children with normal hearing. All subjects in this study were found to have increased the number of consonants in their consonantal inventories by the end of the thirteen month period. This result indicated that both devices were of some use to the subjects. Neither group showed a consistently larger increase in the number of new consonants that had emerged by the final inventory. The assortment of consonants emerging in the consonantal inventories of the subjects was also investigated and found to vary more on an individual basis rather than a group basis. However, the results did show that more implanted subjects had the consonants /s/, /w/ and / / in their inventories by the end of the study. More aided subjects had / / and /h/ in their consonantal inventories by the end of the study. Although being an average 12 months older than the aided subjects, more implanted subjects had consonants in their inventories that required the perception of high frequency cues. This study also showed two other interesting trends. Firstly, both subject groups had individuals that did not progress as well as expected. Secondly, the implanted subjects produced the unvoiced stops /p,t,k/ and the unvoiced fricative / / more often than the aided subjects.