Audiology and Speech Pathology - Research Publications

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    Components of a rehabilitation programme for young children using the Multichannel cochlear implant
    DETTMAN, S ; Barker, E ; Rance, G ; Dowell, R ; Galvin, K ; Sarant, J ; Cowan, R ; Skok, M ; Larratt, M ; Clark, G ; Allum, DJ (John Wiley & sons, Inc., 2006)
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    Speech perception results for children with implants with different levels of preoperative residual hearing.
    Cowan, RS ; DelDot, J ; Barker, EJ ; Sarant, JZ ; Pegg, P ; Dettman, S ; Galvin, KL ; Rance, G ; Hollow, R ; Dowell, RC ; Pyman, B ; Gibson, WP ; Clark, GM ( 1997-11)
    OBJECTIVE: Many reports have established that hearing-impaired children using the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant may show both significant benefits to lipreading and significant scores on open-set words and sentences using electrical stimulation only. These findings have raised questions about whether severely or severely-to-profoundly deaf children should be candidates for cochlear implants. To study this question, postoperative results for implanted children with different levels of preoperative residual hearing were evaluated in terms of speech perception benefits. STUDY DESIGN/SETTING: A retrospective study of the first 117 children, sequentially, to undergo implantation in the Melbourne and Sydney Cochlear Implant Clinics was undertaken. All children had been assessed by and received their implants in a tertiary referral centre. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: To assess aided residual hearing, the children were grouped into four categories of hearing on the basis of their aided residual hearing thresholds measured preoperatively. To assess benefits, the scores of children on standard speech perception tests were reviewed. As different tests were used for children with different ages and language skills, children were grouped into categories according to the level of postoperative speech perception benefit. RESULTS: The results showed that children in the higher categories of aided preoperative residual hearing showed significant scores on open-set word and sentence perception tests using the implant alone. For children in lower categories of aided residual hearing, results were variable within the groups. More than 90% of children with implants with aided residual hearing thresholds in the speech range above 1 kHz achieved open-set understanding of words and sentences. CONCLUSION: While the results of this preliminary study confirm previous findings of differential outcomes for children with different levels of preoperative residual hearing, they suggest that children with severe to profound hearing impairments should be considered for cochlear implantation.
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    Spoken Language Development in Oral Preschool Children With Permanent Childhood Deafness
    Sarant, JZ ; Holt, CM ; Dowell, RC ; Rickards, FW ; Blamey, PJ (OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2009)
    This article documented spoken language outcomes for preschool children with hearing loss and examined the relationships between language abilities and characteristics of children such as degree of hearing loss, cognitive abilities, age at entry to early intervention, and parent involvement in children's intervention programs. Participants were evaluated using a combination of the Child Development Inventory, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Preschool Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals depending on their age at the time of assessment. Maternal education, cognitive ability, and family involvement were also measured. Over half of the children who participated in this study had poor language outcomes overall. No significant differences were found in language outcomes on any of the measures for children who were diagnosed early and those diagnosed later. Multiple regression analyses showed that family participation, degree of hearing loss, and cognitive ability significantly predicted language outcomes and together accounted for almost 60% of the variance in scores. This article highlights the importance of family participation in intervention programs to enable children to achieve optimal language outcomes. Further work may clarify the effects of early diagnosis on language outcomes for preschool children.