Early Development of Children with Hearing Loss

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究项目的目标是研究父母希望他们在没有手语翻译的情况下融入主流的听力损失（HL）儿童在小学低年级的表现。为此，将对从幼儿园到四年级的HL儿童进行各种评估社会心理发展、认知、口语感知和产生、阅读和写作的测量。结果将与从听力正常（NH）儿童中收集的数据进行比较，作为同一方案的一部分。所有接受测试的儿童都参加了该项目的第一个周期，因此在1岁至4岁之间接受了评估。在所有依赖的语言措施，HL儿童的手段大约是一个标准差低于他们的典型发展的同龄人与NH在那些早期的手段，使他们处于不利地位进入小学。下一个周期的主要重点是研究这些儿童在进入主流教育环境时的表现，因为语言需求预计会升级。预测聋儿的语言能力与课堂语言要求之间的不匹配越来越大，聋儿在学业上逐渐落后。本研究的四个具体目标是：（1）跟踪119名儿童的言语、语言、社会心理、认知和学业发展，这些儿童参加了本项目的第一个周期，一直到四年级;（2）验证CI佩戴者的语言处理问题与HA佩戴者不同的假设，因为两种设备传递的信号类型不同;（3）检查HL儿童表现出的缺陷模式在多大程度上最好用加工限制假说与结构缺陷假说来描述;（4）检验HL儿童的表现范围从典型发育的NH儿童的表现到基于现存文献的NH儿童的预期表现的假设。这个项目是独特的动机，因为数据将收集从一岁开始测试的儿童，因为选择的依赖措施产生的结果，从主要研究者的其他研究。 公共卫生相关性：最近的技术进步极大地改善了感音神经性听力损失儿童的前景，使其中许多儿童能够在普通学校接受教育。具有讽刺意味的是，正是这种向主流的转变削弱了我们跟踪他们在这些技术下的表现的能力。在这个项目中，我们将通过早期的小学年级儿童与听力损失和没有谁是以前在学龄前跟踪。这些数据将揭示在学龄前阶段的干预策略，为儿童准备好正规学校的语言需求，以及在学年期间应该提供什么服务，以促进语言和学术成功。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this research project is to examine how children with hearing loss (HL) whose parents wish for them to be mainstreamed without a sign-language interpreter are faring in the early elementary grades. For that purpose, children with HL will be tested from kindergarten through grade four on a variety of measures evaluating psychosocial development, cognition, spoken language perception and production, reading, and writing. Results will be compared to data collected from children with normal hearing (NH) tested as part of the same protocol. All children to be tested participated in the first cycle of this project, and so were evaluated between the ages of one and four years. On all dependent language measures, means for children with HL were roughly one standard deviation below means for their typically developing peers with NH in those early years, leaving them at a disadvantage going into elementary school. The primary focus of this next cycle is to examine how these children do when they enter mainstream educational settings where language demands are expected to escalate. An increasing mismatch between the language abilities of the deaf children and the language requirements of the classroom are predicted, such that deaf children fall progressively behind academically. The four specific aims of this project are: (1) To track the speech, language, psychosocial, cognitive, and academic development of 119 children who participated in the first cycle of this project through fourth grade; (2) To test the hypothesis that CI wearers have linguistic processing problems different from those of HA wearers because of the difference in the kind of signal delivered by the two devices; (3) To examine the extent to which the pattern of deficits exhibited by children with HL is best described by the processing limitations hypothesis versus the structural deficits hypothesis; and (4) To test the hypothesis that the performance of children with HL ranges from what is measured in typically developing children with NH to what would be expected of dyslexic children with NH based on the extant literature. This project is uniquely motivated both because data will be collected from children tested from one year of age and because the selection of dependent measures arises from results emerging from the Principal Investigator's other research. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent technological advances have greatly improved prospects for children with sensorineural hearing loss, making it possible for many of these children to be educated in regular schools. Paradoxically it is precisely that shift to the mainstream that has diminished our ability to keep track of how they are doing as a result of these technologies. In this project we will follow through the early elementary grades children with and without hearing loss who were previously followed during the preschool years. These data will shed light both on what intervention strategies in the preschool years prepared children well for the language demands of regular school, and what services should be provided during the school years to facilitate language and academic success.