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serve children with a mild, moderate or unilateral hearing loss—all which can
now be identified shortly after birth. As increasing numbers of children are
identified with hearing loss at earlier ages, the number of children referred for
services continues to steadily rise, creating further demands for qualified
service providers. Although the challenges related to service coordination can
appear insurmountable, the potential for making an extraordinary difference
in the lives of young children with hearing loss has never been greater.
This monograph on early intervention unites contributors from around the
world, from Nigeria to Israel, Germany and the United States, and offers a
range of perspectives and approaches to the conundrums that, to some degree
or another, we all face. We begin our journey in the United States with Karl
White, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and
Management, who discusses potential solutions for the challenges faced by
early intervention service providers across the country following wider
implementation of newborn hearing screening.
Next, Joni Alberg, Ph.D., executive director of BEGINNINGS for Parents of
Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., and her colleagues outline
a model of collaboration among state agencies to benefit children and families
in North Carolina.
Jean Desjardin, Ph.D., advanced research associate in the Children’s Research
and Evaluation (CARE) Center at the House Ear Institute, explores the
relationship between parents’ sense of their own competence to guide their
child’s early development and how it influences their child’s acquisition of
spoken language.
In the past, many children with unilateral hearing loss were identified only
after they had begun to struggle academically during their school years.
Newborn hearing screening now makes it possible to identify this population
at birth. Sarah McKay, Au.D., senior audiologist at the Center for Childhood
Communication at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, focuses on the
issues and challenges associated with managing unilateral hearing loss in
very young children.
For many years, bilingual learners in the United States were located almost
solely along the southwestern border of the country. Today, none of the 48
contiguous states is completely unilingual. Jan Moore, Ph.D., and colleagues
present a case study of the spoken Spanish-language development of a child
who received a cochlear implant at age 20 months. The case study is designed
to expand on existing knowledge regarding Spanish language development
among at-risk children to improve services for this population.
Next, Andrea Bohnert, M.T.A.-F., and colleagues at the University Clinic
Mainz, Germany, share their experiences with bilateral implantation and auditory
development among 41 young children. The article also discusses several
factors that must be considered when evaluating children for bilateral
implants.
Efrat Schorr, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Gonda Brain Research
234 Foreword