Teaching Vocabulary to Preschool Children With Hearing Loss

Abstract

Despite poor vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of specific vocabulary teaching methods on vocabulary learning for this group. The authors compared three vocabulary instruction conditions with preschool children with hearing loss: (a) explicit, direct instruction; (b) follow-in labeling; and (c) incidental exposure using an adapted alternating-treatments single-subject experimental design. Nine preschool children with hearing loss participated in the study across 6 weeks, with intervention implemented by 4 teachers of the deaf. Visual analysis of the results of the data indicated that participants learned the most words in the explicit, direct instruction condition and the fewest words in the incidental exposure condition. These results are not consistent with some recommendations currently made to educators. The authors discuss implications for practice, including emphasis on direct instruction.

Teaching language components to deaf/hard-of-hearing and cochlear implant users: a literature review

“…Some conclusions can be drawn in the analysis of the articles selected in the last phase of this review study, regarding the effectiveness of verbal repertoire teaching methods for the deaf population and users of CI: I) The importance of individualized teaching (computerized or not), based on discrete trials, with explicit learning criteria and repeating/correction opportunities in case of wrong answers 17,18,[20][21][22][23]32 ;…”

“…Regarding the participants of these studies (Table 1), between 2 and 10 individuals participated in eight studies [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] ; 11 to 20 individuals participated in seven studies 12,14,[24][25][26][27][28] . Seven studies had more than 21 participants 13,[29][30][31][32][33][34] , in which three publications 29,31,33 had hearing participants as direct target of the interventions (e.g., parents, teachers and CI users caretakers) aiming to evaluate its indirect effects on deaf children and CI users' rehabilitation.…”

“…Some of these studies, such as the publications from Suskind et al 33 and Clare Allen et al 31 aimed to establish teaching repertoires or increase the number of words and the quality of statements emitted in the context of the deaf and CI user child -thus, creating conditions for the occurrence of incidental learning of these repertoires. Despite the importance of parents and teachers skills training and the enrichment of environments in which the child can present a high number of responses, enabling procedures of modeling and shaping, many studies in point to the need for direct, individual and programmed interventions in order to teach verbal repertoires to the population 23 . Thus, incidental exposure is necessary, but not sufficient.…”

“…Regarding the research designs used in the selected studies, most of them adopted experimental designs with between groups measures in 10 studies 13,24,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] and single subject in 11 publications 12,16,17,[20][21][22][23]25,26 . Three studies reported case studies or case series 14,35,36 .…”

“…Most of the publications reported interventions aiming to teach expressive vocabulary, in which the main dependent variable was oral responses while naming objects, pictures or answering questions of the researcher regarding these stimuli (e.g., to describe or define an object). In these studies, teaching procedures varied widely between tasks of vocal imitation 17,18,23 , receiving instruction on the definition of stimuli 17,23,25 , attempts at auditory-visual MTS 20,21 . The results were mostly positive, but with great variability among participants when the research presented individual data.…”