Cochlear Implants by Raylene Paludneviciene

Author:Raylene Paludneviciene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

AUDITORY-VERBAL PRACTICE

Auditory-verbal (AV) practice is an evidence-informed intervention approach for children with severe-profound deafness. Its overriding goal is to enable each child to communicate in the prevailing spoken language(s) of home and school. This entails the facilitation of effective listening skills with optimal use of appropriate and consistently worn hearing devices. Restated, AV practice involves primacy of audition through the active facilitation of listening skills. Additionally, this practice involves active participation of each child’s family members, usually at least one of the primary caregivers. Such partnerships between AV practitioners and parents mandate frequent and open communication, so that parents or other caregivers can become their children’s best advocates and primary facilitators of spoken language. In this way, spoken language can become the natural or anchor language of children with severe-profound deafness. Mainstreaming young children with typically hearing peers beginning at the preschool level is also considered integral to the AV intervention model. Minimal support for children with severe-profound deafness in inclusive settings typically includes the use of assisted listening systems in regular classroom settings (Flexer, 1999). Additional support typically involves regular communication and consistently positive collaboration between parent, AV practitioner, and classroom teacher as well as administrators, peers, and all support personnel, such as itinerant/resource teacher or speech-language pathologist (Eriks-Brophy et al., 2006).

The strategy of sometimes focusing on auditory information while avoiding visual stimuli can serve as a gating mechanism; that is, filtering out nonauditory information can permit the listening brain to more strongly process auditory stimuli (Ciaramitaro, Buracas, & Boynton, 2007). Focusing on auditory input to the exclusion of visual input does not, however, imply that visual input is devalued. On the contrary, it is widely recognized that visual input complements auditory input (Bahrick, Lickliter, Castellanos, & Vaillant-Molina, 2010; Dick, Solodkin, & Small, 2010; Morere, this volume). But, given that, prior to intervention, children with severe-profound deafness tend to have poor auditory functioning along with reasonably typical visual functioning, any auditory-based intervention is designed to strengthen children’s use of residual hearing, whether electronic or acoustic. Indeed, as a result of auditory-based intervention, children who have learned how to listen and understand what is heard can then function more like typical children with five senses.

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