Transcript Assistive Listening Devices

Deaf Education
Chapter 9
Personal Qualities of Special Educators
Understanding
Deafness/Hearing
People with normal hearing can’t fully
appreciate the enormous importance
of the auditory sense in human
development and learning.
Definitions
• Medical-defines hearing loss on a
continuum from mild to profound
• Educational-defines hearing loss on a
child’s ability to use his hearing to
understand speech and learn language and
effects of educational performance
Category Labels Used by
IDEA
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Hearing impairment
Deaf
Residual hearing
Hard of hearing
Is Hearing a Disability?
• Deaf People Live, Proudly in Another
Culture, But Not a Lesser One
How We Hear
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audition
function
auricle
sound wave
energy transferred
vibration
inner ear
The Nature of Sound
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Intensity
Frequency
Zero decibels
Hertz
Characteristics of Deaf
Students or Hard of
Hearing Students
Three qualifications:
English Literacy
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Disadvantage
Not spontaneous
Small vocabularies
Omit ending words
Differentiating questions from
statements
Speaking
• Difficulty in all areas
• Significantly lower than peers
• As they age gap widens
Academic Achievement
• Most children with hearing loss have
difficulty with all areas of academic
achievement, especially reading and
math.
Social Functioning
Hearing loss may affect the child’s
socialization and create social problems.
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In one study done in 40 deaf and hard of hearing
children, 50 percent reported trouble with friendship
and being accepted by peers.
In the same study it was found that children with
hearing loss were more likely to have behavioral
difficulties in school and social situations.
Missing a teacher’s language tone can affect the way
the student responds, which can lead to behaviors
which may come across as inattentive, off task, or
rude.
Social Functioning
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Hearing problems also may lead to children feeling
depressed, withdrawn, and isolated, according to one
study.
Another study done by Kluwin was performed in 1985
to determine what the most frequently related factor
to deaf students who were perceived as disruptive in
class. -----The factor found was reading ability.
 Students
who were poor readers
were the most apt to have behavior
problems in school.
Social Functioning
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Research has not been too clear as to the extent to which
hearing loss can affect social functioning.
Attitudes of the community members in which the child is a part
and their ability to mutually communicate can affect the way the
child has success.
It has also been found that deaf children with deaf parents may
be more socially mature and have better communication
systems than deaf children with hearing parents.---The cause of
this is mutual communication that can be found between the
deaf family.
Most with deafness or hearing loss can live in
harmony with their peers when COMMUNICATION
is in place.
How prevalent is deafness or
hearing loss?
Prevalence
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95 out of 1,000 people have CHRONIC hearing
loss(American Speech-Language-Hearing
Association)
 28 million Americans experience some problem with
processing and receiving auditory communication.
 The largest group was adults.---54% of people over
65 years old experience some problems with hearing.
 83 out of 1,000 children in the U.S. have an
educationally significant hearing loss.
 9 out of 1,000 children experience profound hearing
loss.
Related Conditions
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25% of students who are deaf or have
hearing problems have another disabling
condition
--learning disabilities 9%
--mental retardation 8%
--vision problems 4%
--emotional or behavioral problems 4%
Types and Causes
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There are 2 main types:
--Conductive hearing loss results from
abnormalities or complications of the outer or
middle ear. A buildup of excessive wax in the
ear canal can cause this, as can a disease
that leaves fluid or debris. Some children are
born with incomplete auditory canals.
***Conductive hearing loss involves a problem
with transmitting sound vibrations to the inner
ear.
Types and Causes
--Sensorineural hearing loss refers to
damage to the auditory fibers or other
mechanisms in the inner ear.
--Surgery or medication cannot correct
most of this type of hearing loss.
**MIXED HEARING LOSS is when a
person has a combination of conductive
and sensorineural impairments.
Age of Onset
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Congenital—present at birth
 Aquired—appears after birth
 Prelingual—before spoken language
 Postlingual—after the development of spoken
language
 Of the deaf and hard of hearing, 95% of
students in special education have a
prelingual hearing loss. This type requires
more assistance with language acquisition
and communication skills.
Causes of Congenital Hearing
Loss
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Genetic Factors—more cases deal with genetic
abnormalities rather than deaf parents passing a
“deaf” gene to their children.
Maternal Rubella—rubella has relatively mild
symptoms usually, but can cause deafness when
it affects a pregnant woman in her first trimester.
Congenital Cytomegalovirus(CMV)—a common
viral infection that 1% of infants have this virus in
their saliva.
Prematurity—early delivery and low birth weight
are more common among children who are deaf
rather than among the general population.
Causes of Acquired Hearing Loss
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Otitis Media—a temporary recurrent infection in
the middle ear, also the most common medical
diagnosis for children. 90% of children
experience this infection at least once, and 1/3 of
children under age 5 have recurrent episodes. If
antibiodics are used, the infection will go away,
but if not hearing loss is common.
Meningitis—the leading cause of postlingual
hearing loss. A bacterial or viral infection of the
central nervous system that can destroy the
sensitive acoustic part of the inner ear. Children
with this condition usually have profound hearing
loss.
Causes of Acquired Hearing Loss
Meniere’s Disease– a rare disease that
causes sudden and unpredictable attacks of
vertigo, fluctuations in hearing, and ringing.
Often occurs in the middle aged,but can also
affect children under 10.
 Noise-Induced Hearing Loss—too much
noise pollution (very loud sounds) can cause
hearing loss.
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Assessment of Infants
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The earlier the hearing loss is identified, the better.
--early intervention
--language and communication development
Hearing loss often goes undetected in many children. All babies
can make sounds, but until complex language development
occurs, it is harder to find.
**Figure 9.2 on page355 shows the expected auditory
behaviors in young children.
As of 1999 in most states, a hearing screening is mandatory
for all newborns.
--auditory brain stem response—sensors are placed on the
scalp and measure electrical activity as the infant
responds to the stimuli.
--otoacoustic emission screening—a tiny microphone is
placed in the baby’s ear to detect the “echoes” of hair cells
Pure-Tone Audiometry and Speech
Audiometry
Pure-tone audiometry is used to assess the hearing
of older children and adults. An audiometer is an
electronic device used that generates sounds at
different levels of intensity and frequency. The
child or adult raises their hand when sounds are
heard. The results of the test are plotted on an
audiogram.
***See the audiograms on Figure 9.3, page 358359.
Speech audiometry tests a person’s detection and
understanding of speech. A list of one and two
syllable words is presented at different levels. If
the person can understand half of the words,
they are not considered hearing impaired.
Alternative Audiometric Techniques
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Play Audiometry—a child performs simple
activities when they hear a signal.
 Operant Conditioning Audiometry—a child
receives a token or candy when they push a
lever in response to a sound.
 Behavior Observation Audiometry—an
assessment procedure in which the child’s
reactions to sounds are observed.
Degrees of Hearing Loss
 Slight
 Mild
 Moderate
 Severe
 Profound
 Some
children hear at different degrees
of clarity, and some children hear at
different levels from day to day.
Hearing Aids
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Hearing aids are amplification devices that make
sounds louder.
Early hearing aids amplified sounds without
discrimination, but now can be tailored to each
child’s needs.
Many different sizes and shapes exist, but all pick
up sound, magnify sound’s energy, and delivers it
louder to the middle ear.
Hearing aids only make sounds louder, NOT
CLEARER.
The child wearing the device should wear it
throughout the day.
A noisy environment makes the hearing aid less
effective.
Assistive Listening Devices
Distance, noise, and reverberation are the major problems children with hearing loss will have in the
classroom.
This can be solved by using a group listening device.
This is a radio link between the teacher and the child. The teacher wears a small microphone
transmitter near the lips and the student will wear a receiver that doubles as a hearing aid.
This device does not use wires because there is a radio frequency. This allows the teacher and
student to move freely about the room.
This listening situation is the same as the teacher and the student being only six inches away from
each other at all times.
Cochlear Implants
 Cochlear implants are not like hearing aids
because they do not amplify sound. They bypass
the damaged hair cells and stimulate the auditory
nerve directly.
 The implant have four basic parts:
 External microphone
 External speech processor
 Transmitter
 Receiver/stimulator
Electrodes will collect the impulses from the stimulator and send them
directly to the brain by the auditory nerve.
Cochlear Implant Surgery
 The actual surgery takes about 2-3 hours with an
overnight stay.
 4 weeks later the patient will return for stimulation of
the device and tune-up sessions.
 About 14,000 people in the U.S. have received these
implants with half being children between the ages of 2
and 6. There is not an optimal age for implantation, but
earlier implantation seems to have better outcomes.
Controversy
 There is great controversy over this topic. Some feel it is a form of
genocide to the deaf culture. Luterman (1999) offers an explanation for
the position that it is difficult for most hearing people to understand:
“People who have never heard do not experience hearing impairment
as a loss. This is why they can believe, much to the consternation of
the hearing population, that deafness is a cultural difference rather
than a deficit. It would be analogous, for example, to those who had
ESP thinking that the rest of us were terribly handicapped in our
communication abilities, while we who do not possess ESP and have
never had it do not feel the least handicapped. The only way we
would is if those who had ESP constantly reminded us of our
deficiency and tried to “fix” us.”
Supports and Technologies That
Supplement or Replace Sound
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There are five supports and technologies that
students with a hearing impairment can use
to increase communication.
 They are:
1. Interpreters
2. Speech-to-text translation
3. Television captioning
4. Text telephones
5. Alerting devices
Interpreters
 Definition of interpreting: signing the speech of a teacher or other speaker for a
person who is deaf.
 It began as a profession in 1964 with the establishment of the Registry of
Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), There are many states who trained interpreters
must meet the standards of RID to be certifies by them.
 Initially the organization was used for deaf adults in situations such a legal or medical
interactions.
 There are also educational interpreters (AKA educational transliterator). These
people make it possible for students to successfully complete postsecondary
programs.
 There is also a greater number in the elementary and secondary classrooms being
seen. They perform jobs such as tutoring, assisting regular and special education
teachers, keeping records, and supervising students with hearing loss.
Speech-to-text translations
 It is called computer aided speech-to-text translation (C-Print).
 The was created by the National Technical Institute for the deaf at the
University of Rochester.
 How it works…
 Trained captionists type the teacher’s lecture and other student
comments into a computer using shorthand. The computer uses
special software to translate the code and the words will appear
on the student’s screen about 3 seconds after the word is spoken.
 An example of the shorthand would be --- kfe for coffee
 The text will stay on the students screen for about 1 minute.
 These captionists eliminate redundancies, identify key points, and
condense information in the fly, while trying to keep as close to the
original as possible.
Television Captioning
 Most regular programming today has the availability of captioned
text. This is printed text at the bottom of the screen that is
similar to watching a film with subtitles.
 In 1993 a federal law required that all television sets sold in the
U.S. be equipped with an internal device that allows users to
position captions anywhere on the screen.
 Educational Setting:
 In the educational setting, it was found that deaf students
comprehend more from scripts that were accompanied by video
than by reading just scripts alone.
 This suggests that the visual stimulation can help the deaf
viewers improve their comprehension.
 Lewis and Jackson suggest that television literacy might advance
the reading skills of the deaf students by exposing them to English
vocabulary and syntax.
Text telephones
 The telephone served as a barrier to deaf people in employment and social interaction for many
years.
 They now have acoustic couplers to send immediate messages over conventional telephone lines in
typed form. They can send a typed message over the telephone to anyone who also has a TT.
 The American with Disabilities Act said that TT’s should be available in public places. You can find
them in :
 Airports
 Libraries
All states have a relay service where an operator who will relay the messages so that they may
communicate with a person on a conventional phone.
Alerting Devices
 Some individuals who are deaf use special devices to alert them
of special sounds or events.
 These events can include:
A doorbell
An alarm-clock
A fire alarm
 These devices are usually a sound or vibration sensitive switch
connected to a flashing light or a vibrator. There are also
alerting dogs that can sense these sounds.
Educational
Approaches
 Over the years, many philosophies, theories, and specialized methods have been
used to teach children who are deaf. Many have been promoted and many have
been denounced by all people.
 Table 9.1 gives the historical events that led up to this point. Pg.366-367
 The primary function of all teachers of students with hearing loss is the
development and use of language and communication skills. There are three
approaches to teaching these students:
Oral/aural approach
Total communication
Bilingual/bicultural approach
It is said that the content of the subject is not as important as the chance for
those students to use language expressively and receptively.
Oral/Aural Approaches
 Educational approaches with an oral/aural emphasis train students in producing
and understanding speech in all aspects of their education.
 Prior to the 1970’s, oral/aural approaches were widely used in the U.S. Now only
about ¼ of these educational programs identify themselves as solely oral/aural.
 Children in these programs will use several different means to develop residual
hearing and to speak intelligibly. These are:
 Auditory
 Visual
 Tactile
They use amplification, auditory training, speech reading, technological aids, and
talking.
Oral/Aural Approach continued
Educators who use this approach acknowledge the difficulty
for the teacher, the parents, and even the students.
The students are the ones who have the most difficult time
with it, but the reward is great and thought to be worth the
effort.
Most of these students will learn speech well enough to
communicate effectively with hearing people.
The best results are when the child experiences this
program and is also integrated into the classroom for most
of the day.
Auditory Learning
 Adults: Listening is 45% of our daily communication.
 Children: Listening is close to 60% of their daily communication.
 Many children with hearing loss have more auditory potential than they use.
Their residual hearing can be improved by communication and daily experiences.
 All children, regardless of their communication preference, should receive
training to help them improve their listening skills.
 How should this type of training occur??? It should begin by teaching young
children awareness of sound.
 Parents can direct their child’s attention to sounds in their home (ex: doorbell, running
water)
 They can then focus on the localization of sound.
 The next step is the discrimination of sounds.
Auditory learning continued
 The main focus of auditory learning is to learn to listen and to learn by listening
instead of just listening to hear.
 There are four levels of auditory listening :
 Detecting
 Discriminating
 Identifying
 The comprehension of meaningful sounds (highest level of listening skills)
 Some teachers will conduct these sessions using only hearing. In all actuality
though, the child will gain useful information from vision and the other senses. So
all senses should be developed and used.
Speech Reading
 Definition: Understanding a spoken message by observing the speaker’s face.
 Children with any type of hearing loss and regardless of what type of communication they use
will use vision to help them understand speech.
 Children can pay attention to the speaker’s lips and can derive words and important clues .
 Speech reading is very difficult and has many limitations.
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Some words appear the same through pronunciation. (ex: mat, bat, pat)
Visual clues may be blocked by a hand, pencil, gum, or mustache.
Some speakers do not move their lips at all when they speak.
It is very tiring to watch lips for extended periods of time.
Distance is always a factor when reading lips.
Speech Reading continued
 Walker (1986) estimates that even the best speech readers detect only about
25% of what is being said through visual clues alone.
 Shanny Mow (1973), a teacher who is deaf, graphically describes the frustrations
of speech reading.
“Like the whorls on his fingertips, each person’s lips are different and move in a peculiar
way of their own. When young, you build confidence when you guess correctly “ball”,
“fish”, and “shoe” on your teachers lips. This confidence doesn’t last. As soon as you
discover that there are more than four words in the dictionary, it evaporates. Seventy
percent of the words when appearing on the lips are no more than blurs. Lip reading is a
precarious and cruel art which rewards a few who have mastered it and tortures the
many who have tried and failed.”
Speech Reading continued
Even though there are many problems with speech, reading it
is still a valuable tool for a deaf or hard of hearing person.
There are computer-assisted video instruction that have
been developed by Bloomberg University.
These can improve their speech reading skills by letting
them practice speech reading themselves and others.
Cued Speech
 Cued speech is a method of supplementing oral communication.
 It gives a visual representation of spoken language by adding cues, in the form of hand signals
near the chin, to assist in identifying syllabic and phonetic features of speech that cannot be
distinguished through speech reading.
 These hand signals:
 Are used in conjunction with speech.
 They are not signs or alphabet letters and cannot be used alone.
 Eight hand shaped identify consonant sounds and four locations identify vowel sounds.
 A hand shape used with a location gives a visual identification of the syllable.
 Cornett (1974) feels that this is good for young children because it clarifies the pattern of
spoken English and does not disrupt the pattern of natural speech.
Deafness: The Dilema
by Bonnie Tucker pg 362-363
 Some deaf people claim the right to personal diversity. They do not want to fix
their hearing if that option ever came about. Some believe that it is their own
ethnicity.
 At the same time they will demand to have interpreters , TTY’s, telephone relay
services, specially funded educational programs, and close captioning, at no cost
to themselves.
 It is argued that they have the right to not fix their “deafness”, but they should
not expect society to pay for the resulting cost of that choice.
 Bonnie says, “ You can’t have your cake and eat it too”.
What do you think???
Total Communication
•Also known as simultaneous communication, or simcom
•Educational programs with an emphasis on total
communication support diversity in forms of
communication to teach English to students with hearing
loss.
Total Communciation
•Practitioners of total communication claim that signing
and fingerspelling accompanied with speech make it
possible for children to use either one or both types of
communication.
•Most widely used method of instruction in schools for
the deaf
Manually Coded English
• Teachers speak as they sign
• Teachers follow form and structure of
spoken English as closely as possible
• Intention of the English-based sign
systems is to facilitate the development
of reading, writing, and other language
skills
Manually Coded English
SEE I
SEE II
Manually
Coded
English
Signed
English
Signing Exact English
Signing Essential English (SEE I)
Signing Exact English (SEE II)
Signed English
• Manually coded
English borrows
many signs and
incorporates some of
the features of
American Sign
Language
ingerspelling
• Manual alphabet
• Consists of 26
distinct hand
positions (one for
each English letter)
• Used to spell out
proper names for
which no signs exist
Let’s play a game!!
American Sign Language
• Language of the Deaf culture in the
United States and Canada
• A visual-spatial language in which the
shape, location, and movement pattern
of the hands; the intensity of motions;
and the signer’s facial expressions all
communicate meaning and content.
American Sign Language
• Has it’s own rules of phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics
• Does not correspond to spoken or
written English
• Some signs are iconic
• Most signs have little or no iconicity
Bilingual-Bilingual Approach
• 1990’s – Deaf community began calling
for the use of ASL as the language of
instruction.
– Believe that ASL provides a natural
pathway to linguistic competence and that
English is better learned in the context of a
bilingual-bilingual (bi-bi) approach after the
child has mastered his native or first
language (ASL)
Bi-Bi Approach
– Proponents of this model view deafness as
a cultural and linguistic difference, not a
disability, and recognize ASL as the deaf
child’s natural language
– Goal to bi-bi education approach is to help
deaf students become bilingual adults who
are competent in their first language, ASL,
and can read and write with competence in
their second language, English.
Bi-Bi Approach
Bilingual
education
The basic theoretical
argument for bilingual
education is that students
who have a solid foundation
in their native language (L1)
will be able to use their
literacy-related L1 skills as a
springboard for learning the
majority second language
(L2).
Bi-Bi Approach
Some related support for the bi-bi approach can
be found in research finding a correlation
between early exposure to and development of
fluency in ASL and increased competence and
English literacy.
Educational Placement
Alternatives
U.S. Department of Education (2004)
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82% attend public schools
45% regular classrooms
19% resource rooms for part of the day
22% separate classrooms
7% attend special schools
Educational Placement Alternatives
• Braden, Maller, and Paquin (1993)
report that the performance IQs of
children with hearing loss who were
educated in residential schools
increased over a 3- to 4-year period but
that the scores of similar students in
regular school day programs did not.
Educational Placement Alternatives
• Bat-Chava (2000) notes where a child who is
deaf is educated also influences the likelihood
of his or her cultural identity.
• Also, students are more likely to view hearing
loss as a disability in schools where oral
English is the language of instruction.
• Schools that use ASL in the language
instruction view the deafness as a culture.
Educational Placement Alternatives
• Deaf or hard of hearing students must be
provided with all speech and other auditory
information by an educational interpreter.
• A skilled interpreter in the classroom,
however, is no guarantee that students with a
hearing loss will receive receive and
participate in accurate communication.
Educational Placement Alternatives
• Stinson and Liu (1999) recommends the
following for students with hearing loss:
– Take responsibility and believe the
outcome will be successful
– Use communication skills for participating
in the regular classroom
– In small-group learning activities, carry out
a specific task and share the information
with the group
Postsecondary Education
• The percentage of students with
hearing loss who attend postsecondary
educational programs has risen
dramatically in the past 20 years.
• 40% of all students with hearing loss go
on to receive higher education
Current Issues and Future Trends
• Oral-aural and total communication will
likely be used
• An increasing percentage of the deaf
children served in special schools and
self-contained classrooms will be taught
with the bi-bi approach, where ASL is
the language of instruction
Current Issues and Future Trends
• In the past, fundamental disagreement
focused on the extent to which deaf
children should express language
through speech and perceive the
communication of others through
speechreading and residual hearing.
• The focal point today, however, is the
language modality – auditory or visual –
best suits a child’s acquisition of an
initial language.
Current Issues and Future Trends
• Mahshie (1995) recommends letting the child
choose his or her first language:
– In environments where the Deaf child encounters
both spoken and signed language separately – as
whole language – during the course of natural
interactions, it has become apparent to both
parents and professionals that the child will be the
guide regarding his or her predisposition toward a
more oral or more visual language. In this win-win
situation, the choice of a first language is clearly
the child’s (p.73).