Change in auditory attention in a child with a cochlear implant, with ADHD treated with methylphenidate (Ritalin): a case study.

This retrospective single case study describes the effect of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on the auditory attention of an implanted child with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Child A received a Nucleus 22 cochlear implant at age 4 years 6 months. His behaviour before and after the implant surgery was challenging. Language development made little progress. Five years later a diagnosis of ADHD was made and methylphenidate (Ritalin) was prescribed. The apparent effect of this drug on auditory attention is discussed. In this study, methylphenidate did not appear to affect threshold levels or responses in tuning. However, audition did improve in everyday listening conditions. The drug did not appear to assist language development. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Paediatric cochlear implantation--the balance between professional caution and urgency of treatment.

There is a constant pressure to reduce the age of cochlear implantation in profoundly deaf children and thereby improve the auditory verbal language development in implantees. We effected a change in the regimen for the assessment of new referrals, and show how this has shortened the time taken in Cambridge to complete assessment and offer implantation in appropriate cases. We achieved a reduction in the duration of assessment of 2.8 months (which was not, however, statistically significant) by simple reorganization, while, we believe, maintaining the standards of assessment.

The difficulties of learning fingerspelling: an experimental investigation with hearing adult learners.

Fingerspelling is used to support sign languages, providing a means by which words without signs may be communicated. As with signing itself, it has often been reported that learners find greater difficulty reading fingerspelling than they do in encoding it. An experiment tested the skills of adult hearing learners of the two-handed fingerspelling system used in British Sign Language. Participants were asked to read video recordings of their own fingerspellings; thus each undertook the reading task at their own spelling speed. Participants were divided into fast and slow spellers. Each group made more errors in the reading than the spelling task and this continued to be the case when read items received a contextual cue to assist recognition. Words with regular and irregular spellings were used as a means to investigate the cognitive processes underlying fingerspelling. Regular words were spelled faster and read more accurately, suggesting that these processes place some reliance on phonological encoding. The implications of these results of the learning and practice of fingerspelling are discussed.