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Changes in listening without and with radio aid in different situations 3.3.2. Listening Function (ELF) Using a scale from 1-5 with 1 being "Seldom" and 5 "Usually", the ELF assessed whether when using the radio aid the child appeared more aware of voice and environmental sounds, readily searched for the location of the speaker's voice, used an increased amount of babbling/talking and had more interest in communicating. Figure 6 shows that all the children were reported as being more aware of voice and able to locate someone talking when using the radio aid. Reports of changes to the child's babbling/ talking and interest in communication were mixed. There was little change to awareness of environmental sounds as might be expected.
Source publication
The first few years of a child’s life are a time of rapid and important development. During this time the foundations for communication are laid and for all children, language and interaction with their parents is critical to success. Hearing is essential for learning spoken language and the earlier a child can hear speech, the better their opportu...
Citations
... Assistive listening devices like remote microphones can alleviate the effects of noise in the classroom (Davies et al. 2001;Bertachini et al. 2015) and facilitate parent-child communication in difficult acoustical situations (Allen et al. 2017). Yet, Busch et al. (2017) found that before the age of 6, only 1 in 5 children with a CI was using assistive listening devices, and among those who did, the median duration of use was just around 17 min per day. ...
... On the one hand, this means that the auditory scene classifier has categorized almost all auditory input that the children have received, and that the data logs provide a relatively complete picture of their auditory environments. On the other hand, the low accessory use is concerning, because accessories can support CI users in adverse listening conditions: in noisy classrooms, FM, or similar remote microphone systems can help by directly streaming the teacher's voice to the child's hearing device (Davies et al. 2001;Iglehart 2004;Bertachini et al. 2015;Razza et al. 2017), and even at home, they can promote parent-child interactions by allowing spoken language communication in situations in which it would otherwise be difficult-for example, in the car (Allen et al. 2017). ...
Objectives:
The data logs of Cochlear Nucleus cochlear implant (CI) sound processors show large interindividual variation in children's daily CI use and auditory environments. This study explored whether these differences are associated with differences in the receptive vocabulary of young implanted children.
Design:
Data of 52 prelingually deaf children, who had received a CI before 3 years of age, were obtained from their clinical records. In total, 73 Peabody Picture Vocabulary tests and CI data logs for 1 year preceding each test were collected. The data logs were used to determine the children's average daily amount of CI use and exposure to speech, speech in noise, noise, music, and quiet. In addition, information was collected about other potential predictors of language abilities, namely gender, age, age at implantation, etiology of deafness, educational placement, and implantation mode (unilateral, bilateral). Model selection with Akaike's information criterion was used to determine which data-logging metrics, other variables, and combinations of both best predict receptive vocabulary scores.
Results:
The data showed a strong positive association between receptive vocabulary and daily CI use, and a negative association between receptive vocabulary and daily exposure to music. Associations with the data logs' speech and noise metrics were less clear. The most important other variable was educational placement. The best model performance was achieved when data logs and other information were combined.
Conclusions:
The results emphasize the importance of consistent CI use and a rich auditory environment for the early language development of young CI users. The study also shows that CI data logs capture information about children's environment and CI use that are related to language performance and can help to detect and address problems and improve the auditory rehabilitation after cochlear implantation.
... Thirteen of the families had not been told by the school service about borrowing an FM system for home use. FM systems are increasingly being offered to deaf children of nursery age and for home use (Allen et al., 2017), but they would not usually be offered to very young children or those mostly using BSL at school. ...
This piece of research, funded by the National Deaf Children's Society, explored the views of a range of families from across the UK who are living on a low income and bringing up deaf children. The report also contains a literature review about the impact of low income on families with deaf children, focusing on links with the deaf children's language development.
