Phonemic Awareness Skills of Cochlear Implant Children and Children with Normal Hearing in Primary School

Objectives: Phonemic awareness skills have a significant impact on children speech and language. The purpose of this study was investigating the phonemic awareness skills of children with cochlear implant and normal hearing peers in primary school.

Methods: Phonemic awareness subscales of phonological awareness test were administered to 30 children with cochlear implantation at the first to sixth grades of primary school and 30 children with normal hearing who were matched in age with cochlear implant group. All of children were between 6 to 11 years old. Children with cochlear implant had at least 1 to 2 years of implant experience and they were over 5 years when they receive implantation. Children with cochlear implant were selected from Special education centers in Tehran and children with normal hearing were recruited from primary schools in Tehran. The phonemic awareness skills were assessed in both groups.

Results: The results showed that the Mean scores of phonemic awareness skills in cochlear implant children were significantly lower than children with normal hearing [p <.0001].

Discussion: children with cochlear implant, despite Cochlear implantation prosthesis, had lower performance in phonemic awareness when compared with normal hearing children. Therefore, due to importance of phonemic awareness skills in learning of literacy skills, and defects of these skills in children with cochlear implant, these skills should be assessed carefully in children with cochlear implant and rehabilitative interventions should be considered.

[Difficulties in parenting hearing-impaired children]

Despite the abundance of literature about deaf children, few works specifically address the concept and practice of difficulties in parenting hearing-impaired children. The first interactions of the child are with his parents, and parents have the most important role in child improvements during early intervention programs. The main purpose of this paper was to investigate different aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children. In this article, we reviewed all aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children in papers from 1984-2009 in Medline, Scopus and Proquest and relative textbooks. The semi-professional role of parents of hearing-impaired children make them feel under excessive stress and this usually affects their other roles as fathers and mothers. Many factors including child age, type of hearing loss and parents' individual characteristics may influence the impact of child's hearing loss on parents. Parenting a hearing-impaired child is both similar and different to parenting any other child. Where there are differences, there are usually challenges too. Taking support and advice from professionals and other parents are necessary and invaluable for parents of hearing-impaired children

universal newborn hearing screening in Iran

In September 2002 University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences established a pilot universal newborn hearing screening program in two crowded maternity hospital in Tehran. Our objective was to assess the feasibility of implementing universal newborn hearing screening in IRAN. Between September 2002 and March 2004 a total of 7718 newborns were screened for hearing loss prior to discharge from the wellborn nursery at Milad and Hedayat Hospitals. The average age of the subjects at the initial Screening test was 24hours. The program employed a three-stage hearing screening protocol using transient evoked otoacoustic emissions [TEOAE] screening with referral for diagnostic auditory brainstem response assessment. The overall pass rate at the time of hospital discharge was 92.3%, thus achieving an acceptable referral rate of 7.7% for diagnostic audiological assessments. Nine newborns were identified with permanent unilateral hearing impairment. Newborns identified with bilateral hearing loss were immediately referred to the SABA center for hearing aid assessment and fitting. Newborns as young as 5 weeks old were successfully fitted with hearing instruments and enrolled in the family center early intervention program at the SABA center. The frequency of bilateral congenital hearing loss requiring amplification in this population is shown to be approximately 0.001 newborns. This finding is consistent with previous researches, which have indicated hearing loss to be the most frequently occurring birth defect. Universal newborn hearing screening using TEOAEs proved to be a cost effective and feasible method of identifying congenital hearing loss in IRAN. The existence of many successful screening programs worldwide and the availability of fast, objective, reliable and inexpensive hearing screening procedures mean that universal neonatal hearing screening is becoming one of the standards of care

[Review of 50 years research about speech reading]

Watching a speaker's lips is like hearing speech by eye instead of by ear and markedly improves speech perception. In this review I summarise studies over the last sixty years about lip reading, it's issues, methodological problems, experimental and co relational studies, issues of cerebral lateralization, localization and cognitive and neuro psychologic function. Several studies on speech reading in general suggest that hearing impaired groups actually do not possess superior speech reading skills compared to normal controls. With function magnetic resonance imaging [FMRI] it was also found that the linguistic visual cues are sufficient to activate auditory cortex in the absence of auditory speech sounds. Here I presented data and arguments about all aspects of the phenomenon of lip reading and it's use in rehabilitation audio logy