Purpose Cultural competence is crucial for the successful provision of speech, language, and hearing services. The purpose of this study was to assess and describe gains in cultural awareness, cultural competence, and self-efficacy after service-learning study abroad experiences and to examine whether gains in these areas are related to higher clinical skills ratings in speech-language pathology and audiology students. Method Sixteen speech-language pathology and audiology students participated in two international study abroad experiences (Nicaragua and Malawi). Students completed a survey on cultural awareness, competence, and self-efficacy beliefs and journal entries before, during, and after their trips. In addition, the supervisors assessed the clinical skills of the students by the end of the trip. The researchers applied a mixed-methods approach to analyze data from the survey, clinical ratings, and journals. Results Students showed significant increases in cultural awareness, competence, and self-efficacy. Gains in self-efficacy and cultural awareness were highly correlated with students' clinical ratings in cultural competence as judged by their supervisors. Two main themes were identified from the journal entries: continuing community involvement and growth in cultural self-efficacy. Conclusion Service-learning study abroad experiences help students develop cultural awareness and competence skills and increase their self-efficacy beliefs. Using a mixed-methods approach can help identify strengths and weaknesses in the training of speech-language pathology and audiology students with regard to cultural competence. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12642647

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine whether oral bilingualism could be an advantage for children with hearing loss when learning new words. Method Twenty monolingual and 13 bilingual children with hearing loss were compared with each other and with 20 monolingual and 20 bilingual children with normal hearing on receptive vocabulary and on three word-learning tasks containing nonsense words in familiar (English and Spanish) and unfamiliar (Arabic) languages. We measured word learning on the day of the training and retention the next day using an auditory recognition task. Analyses of covariance were used to compare performance on the word learning tasks by language group (monolingual vs. bilingual) and hearing status (normal hearing vs. hearing loss), controlling for age and maternal education. Results No significant differences were observed between monolingual and bilingual children with and without hearing loss in any of the word-learning task. Children with hearing loss performed more poorly than their hearing peers in Spanish word retention and Arabic word learning and retention. Conclusions Children with hearing loss who grew up being exposed to Spanish did not show higher or lower word-learning abilities than monolingual children with hearing loss exposed to English only. Therefore, oral bilingualism was neither an advantage nor a disadvantage for word learning. Hearing loss negatively affected performance in monolingual and bilingual children when learning words in languages other than English (the dominant language). Monolingual and bilingual children with hearing loss are equally at risk for word-learning difficulties and vocabulary size matters for word learning.

Purpose The goal of this study was to identify predictors of expressive vocabulary in young Spanish-speaking children who are deaf or hard of hearing living in the United States. Method This cross-sectional study considered 53 children with bilateral hearing loss between 8 and 34 months of age ( M = 24, SD = 6.9). Demographic variables, variables related to the hearing loss, and intervention variables were included in a hierarchical regression analysis to predict expressive vocabulary quotients from the MacArthur Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (Communicative Development Inventories; Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003 ). Results Chronological age, degree of hearing loss, functional hearing ability ratings, age of enrollment in early intervention, and the interaction between chronological age and age of intervention accounted for 61.5% of the vocabulary variance. Children who received intervention by 6 months of age achieved significantly higher vocabulary outcomes than children who started intervention later. Conclusion The children's mean vocabulary outcomes were below average when compared with hearing peers. This was especially true for older children, children with moderately-severe-to-profound hearing loss, and children who began intervention after 6 months of age. This delay in vocabulary outcomes has the potential to interfere with future reading and academic outcomes.

Objectives: To examine the effects of unilateral hearing loss on children’s ability to perceive familiar words and to learn and retain new words. Because children with unilateral hearing loss receive full auditory input in one ear, their performance was expected to be consistent with that of children with normal hearing rather than that of children with moderate bilateral hearing loss. Design: Participants were 36 school-age children with normal hearing bilaterally, 11 children with moderate bilateral hearing loss, and 11 children with mild-to-profound unilateral hearing loss (six right and five left). Half of the normally hearing children and two-thirds of the children with unilateral hearing loss were from bilingual Spanish/English-speaking homes. One of the 11 children with bilateral hearing loss was from a bilingual Spanish/English-speaking home. All children completed a word recognition test in English and in Spanish, a word-learning task comprised of nonsense words constructed using the phonotactic rules of English, Spanish, and Arabic, and a next-day word-retention test. Results: Word recognition did not differ across groups in English or Spanish. Learning and retention of nonsense words was highest for the children with normal hearing in all three languages. The children with unilateral and bilateral losses learned and recalled the English nonsense words as well as their normally hearing peers, but performance for the Spanish and Arabic nonsense words was significantly and similarly reduced by hearing loss in either ear. Conclusions: Failure to learn and retain new words given a full auditory representation in one ear suggests that children with unilateral and bilateral hearing losses may share a unifying feature of impairment at the level of the central auditory system.

This study examined the effects of a 9-week auditory intervention on the auditory skills of five children with hearing loss who experienced prolonged auditory deprivation before receiving hearing aids. A single-case multiple baseline design across participants was used to examine the effect of the intervention on the children’s auditory skills using a weekly probe. The analyses showed a moderate to high intervention effect for three out of five participants. Children demonstrated gains in detection, discrimination, and identification, and Participant 5 also showed gains in sentence comprehension. Findings provide preliminary support for offering auditory intervention to children with hearing loss who are late identified and aided in the presence of residual hearing.