Story Retelling Patterns Among Children with and Without Hearing Loss: Effects of Repeated Practice and Parent-Child Attunement

Abstract

I am pleased to offer readers four articles that, once again, demonstrate The Volta Review's commitment to current research in the field of deafness.This issue contains studies that examine reading skills, story retelling patterns, performance of combined acoustical and tactual stimulation and the experiences of parents of children who use an Auditory-Verbal approach.Two of the four articles explore the performance of children with cochlear implants, and the remaining two investigate the utility of different assistive devices and reading patterns of children with hearing loss.Dillon and Pisoni of Haskins Laboratories and Indiana University, respectively, examine the reading skills of children with cochlear implants with regard to repetition of nonwords.A cohort of 76 children, who have been cochlear implant users since approximately age 3, was included in this study.Transcriptions of their repetitions of 20 non-word stimuli were used to determine the relationship between this task and reading ability.Further analysis of demographic variables was performed to determine if any correlations affected outcomes.The researcher's findings are of great interest to professionals who monitor academic progress of children with cochlear implants.Issues related to reading and literacy development also are undertaken by Robertson, Dow and Hainzinger of Denison University and Midwestern University in their study of story retelling patterns of children with and without hearing loss.Present popular culture supports the paradigm of reading aloud early and consistently to children in an effort to reinforce literacy.The authors of this study explored this phenomenon in a group of 10 3-to 6-year-old children with hearing loss and a comparison group of 11 3-to 5-year-old hearing children.Transcriptions of the story retelling abilities of the two groups showed no significant differences in word and phrase recall.Implications for using this technique for early reading instruction are noted.The authors did find significant differences for a variety of other factors that may have greater implications for approaches that should be used with children who have hearing loss.The remaining two manuscripts turn attention to the utilization of different assistive devices and the experiences of families who transition to a specific type of auditory training paradigm to develop listening skills.Reed and Delhorne of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology use a single-subject design to assess speechreading benefit of combined auditory and tactual stimulation in an adult.With a growing emphasis on bilateral cochlear implantation, studies that explore alternative methods of binaural integration are of great importance.The results of this study support the use of combined stimulation for an improvement in speechreading ability and have greater implication for children whose families presently do not opt for bilateral implantation.Finally, Neuss, a Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario explores the experiences of parents as their children transition to Auditory-Verbal therapy.The parents of five children were interviewed about their perspectives prior to and following the transition to Auditory-Verbal therapy as part of this study.Thanks once again to the efforts of a remarkable group of Associate Editors and a Managing Editor who support The Volta Review throughout the year.They are what make The Volta Review great, and I thank each of them for their support on behalf of the journal's growing number of readers.Best wishes to all of you for a happy and healthy 2007.

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