Early Identification and Intervention is Important

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Early Identification and Intervention is Important

Universal Newborn Hearing Screening programs are called “universal” because they are set up to test all babies. All babies can and should have their hearing tested before they leave the hospital, or within 30 days of leaving the hospital. If a baby is born at home, a hearing test should be completed before he or she is one month old. When a baby fails the screening tests, he or she is referred for more detailed, diagnostic hearing testing. If a hearing loss is found, then interventions using hearing aids and therapy services are started to help the baby learn to listen and speak.

The Importance of Universal Screening It is important to find hearing loss as early as possible, because babies start learning how to use sound as soon as they are born. Listening in the first months of life prepares babies to speak. By their first birthday, babies are already learning what words mean. Babies start by babbling, using many of the sounds they hear spoken around them. These early steps are building blocks for communication.

Unless a family has reason to expect the possibility of a hearing loss, some of the early signs may be missed. It is important to test the child’s hearing as soon as you suspect that there may be a problem. If there is a hearing loss, it can be assessed and when appropriate, the baby can be fitted with hearing aids.

Significantly better language development was associated with early identification of hearing loss and early intervention. There was no significant difference between the earlier- and later-identified groups on several variables frequently associated with language ability in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Thus, the variable on which the two groups differed (age of identification and intervention) must be considered a potential explanation for the language advantage documented in the earlier-identified group.(Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, Allison L. Sedey, Diane K. Coulter, Albert L. Mehl)

A description of the Colorado Home Intervention Program (CHIP) in which the participants were enrolled is also provided A longitudtnal study was done at colorado to study language, speech and social-emotional development of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, all of whom have hearing parents. During the course of these investigations, universal newborn hearing screening programs were established in Colorado, changing the age of identification of hearing loss and initiation into intervention in this program geared to families with infants and toddlers, birth through three years of age, from an average of 20 months of age to 2 months of age. Language development is positively and significantly affected by the age of identification of the hearing loss and age of initiation into intervention services. Both speech development and social-emotional variables are highly related to language (journal of deaf studies and deaf education, 2002,8.2).

The general development of 40 deaf and hard of hearing infants was analyzed. The infants were placed into one of two groups according to age at which hearing loss was identified: (a) before age 6 months and (b) after age 18 months. The mean age at testing was 40 months. Developmental quotients (DQs) were used to compare results regardless of the infants’ age at time of testing. Infants were evaluated on the basis of their DQ scores on the Minnesota Child Development Inventory (MCDI; Ireton &Thwing, 1972). MCDI subtests include general development, gross motor, fine-motor, expressive language, comprehension-conceptual, situation-comprehension, self-help, and personal-social. Infants whose hearing loss was identified before age 6 months scored significantly higher than those whose hearing loss was identified after age 18 months in the expressive language and comprehension-conceptual subtests. The performance of the earlier-identified group supports the earliest identification of hearing loss and encourages implementation of universal hearing screening.(From: American Annals of the Deaf Volume 143, Number 5, December 1998 )

(From: American Annals of the Deaf Volume 143, Number 5, December 1998 )

 

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