The best Christmas pageant ever: creating a captioned version

This paper discusses a study done of hearing impaired children and watching a captioned film.

Activities development for 2 word combinations on pre-sentence level TAGS

This paper presents activities to assist teachers of hearing impaired students to develop 2-word combinations for use in instruction in conjunction with the Teacher Assessment of Grammatical Structures Pre-Sentence Level (TAGS-P). The paper presents activity procedures and materials to guide teachers in teaching 2-word combinations.

Perception and cognition in deaf children

This dissertation examines conceptual functioning of hearing impaired persons. Specifically the study addresses perceptual and conceptual functioning in both deaf and hearing children and whether there is a difference in performance as a function of hearing status, as attributable to age differences, or as a function of the school environment.

Deficiência auditiva referida em inquérito de saúde no município de Botucatu, ISA-SP, 2001-02

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Internet video telephony allows speech reading by deaf individuals and improves speech perception by cochlear implant users

OBJECTIVE To analyze speech reading through Internet video calls by profoundly hearing-impaired individuals and cochlear implant (CI) users. METHODS Speech reading skills of 14 deaf adults and 21 CI users were assessed using the Hochmair Schulz Moser (HSM) sentence test. We presented video simulations using different video resolutions (1280 × 720, 640 × 480, 320 × 240, 160 × 120 px), frame rates (30, 20, 10, 7, 5 frames per second (fps)), speech velocities (three different speakers), webcameras (Logitech Pro9000, C600 and C500) and image/sound delays (0-500 ms). All video simulations were presented with and without sound and in two screen sizes. Additionally, scores for live Skype™ video connection and live face-to-face communication were assessed. RESULTS Higher frame rate (>7 fps), higher camera resolution (>640 × 480 px) and shorter picture/sound delay (<100 ms) were associated with increased speech perception scores. Scores were strongly dependent on the speaker but were not influenced by physical properties of the camera optics or the full screen mode. There is a significant median gain of +8.5%pts (p = 0.009) in speech perception for all 21 CI-users if visual cues are additionally shown. CI users with poor open set speech perception scores (n = 11) showed the greatest benefit under combined audio-visual presentation (median speech perception +11.8%pts, p = 0.032). CONCLUSION Webcameras have the potential to improve telecommunication of hearing-impaired individuals.

Educação bilíngue para surdos : um estudo acerca de práticas de letramento crítico com alunos surdos usuários da Língua Brasileira de Sinais

At a time when the issue of the inclusion of hearing-impaired students in regular schools has been discussed, it becomes necessary to reflect upon the relevance of a recurrent educational process in schools specialized in education for the hearing-impaired: the bilingual schools. Such institutions, still scarce in Brazil, offer an oriented and specialized education to hearing-impaired children and adolescents, since they have the Brazilian Sign Language as a language of instruction in all subjects, and the Portuguese written language as an additional language, which gives them the bilingual status. This research aims to investigate how the practices developed in my Portuguese classes in a bilingual school have contributed to the development of student‟s literacy, specifically the Critical Literacy (STREET, 1985, 1990, 1998), in two classes of hearing-impaired students enrolled in the final grades of elementary school. It is a qualitative, ethnographic research, which uses the triangulation system for analyzing data: (i) the pedagogical sequences; (ii) the students‟ activities and (iii) the teacher‟s and students‟ written accounts registered as field notes. Through the intersection of the data, this work evaluates whether students have achieved some level of Critical Literacy, and what kind of collaboration and/or activity is relevant during this process. This research is justified by the need to evaluate practices at bilingual schools that, although supported by current law in Brazil, are still a minority whose work is still not acknowledged or valued. The results show that activities using real texts of different genres can contribute to the development of Critical Literacy, and also to dynamic classes, with discussions about relevant topics to society in Sign Language. Also, activities that encourage students to do research and that provide to the hearing-impaired student, the understanding of the real usefulness of Portuguese as an instrument for the social inclusion of the hearing-impaired providing opportunities for them to change their social position can collaborate to this process.

O desenvolvimento da competência comunicativa intercultural de surdos aprendizes de inglês : a internet como meio

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Letras, Departamento de Línguas Estrangeiras e Tradução, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística Aplicada, 2015.

The Wechsler-Bellevue and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children as predictors of academic achievement for a severely hearing and speech impaired population

This paper reviews a study to determine the applicabilty of the Wechsler-Bellevue and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for severely hearing impaired children.

Auditory and audio-visual reception of words in noise by observers with normal and impaired hearing

This dissertation examines auditory perception and audio-visual reception in noise for both hearing-impaired and normal hearing persons, with a goal of determining some of the noise conditions under which amplified acoustic cues for speech can be beneficial to hearing-impaired persons.

Older people with hearing impairment: A literature review of the spouse's perspective

Spouses of older people with hearing impairment frequently urge their hearing impaired partners to seek help for their hearing difficulties. Only a minority of individuals with hearing impairment are self-motivated, with the majority of clients, especially older clients, presenting at audiology clinics under the persuasion or influence of their spouse or significant other. This highlights the important role that spouses play in initiating aural rehabilitation and indicates that spouses of older people with hearing impairment may become so frustrated with their partners' hearing loss that they are often the primary reason why the hearing impaired person presents for audiological services. To date, however, the number of studies addressing the effect of hearing loss on significant others is limited. Those studies that have investigated the effect of hearing impairment on families are commonly focused on the person with the impairment and most commonly, the significant other has merely been used as a proxy to describe the perceived problems of his or her spouse. Further, there has been no systematic indepth investigation of the needs of spouses of older people with hearing impairment, including the effect of retirement and the increase in time spent together, with the majority of studies focusing primarily on younger spouses of workers affected by noise-induced hearing loss. The cumulative effect of experiencing many years of hearing difficulties with a partner may also influence the extent to which older spouses are affected by hearing impairment. The primary purpose of this article is therefore to critically review the existing literature on the effects of hearing impairment on spouses. It will also provide a rationale for the importance of this topic as a clinical issue and suggest some future directions for research in this area.

Auditory training and adult rehabilitation:a critical review of the evidence

Auditory Training (AT) describes a regimen of varied listening exercises designed to improve an individual’s ability to perceive speech. The theory of AT is based on brain plasticity (the capacity of neurones in the central auditory system to alter their structure and function) in response to auditory stimulation. The practice of repeatedly listening to the speech sounds included in AT exercises is believed to drive the development of more efficient neuronal pathways, thereby improving auditory processing and speech discrimination. This critical review aims to assess whether auditory training can improve speech discrimination in adults with mild-moderate SNHL. The majority of patients attending Audiology services are adults with presbyacusis and it is therefore important to evaluate evidence of any treatment effect of AT in aural rehabilitation. Ideally this review would seek to appraise evidence of neurophysiological effects of AT so as to verify whether it does induce change in the CAS. However, due to the absence of such studies on this particular patient group, the outcome measure of speech discrimination, as a behavioural indicator of treatment effect is used instead. A review of available research was used to inform an argument for or against using AT in rehabilitative clinical practice. Six studies were identified and although the preliminary evidence indicates an improvement gained from a range of AT paradigms, the treatment effect size was modest and there remains a lack of large-sample RCTs. Future investigation into the efficacy of AT needs to employ neurophysiological studies using auditory evoked potentials in hearing-impaired adults in order to explore effects of AT on the CAS.

Benefits of amplification for speech recognition in background noise

The purpose of the present study was to examine the benefits of providing audible speech to listeners with sensorineural hearing loss when the speech is presented in a background noise. Previous studies have shown that when listeners have a severe hearing loss in the higher frequencies, providing audible speech (in a quiet background) to these higher frequencies usually results in no improvement in speech recognition. In the present experiments, speech was presented in a background of multitalker babble to listeners with various severities of hearing loss. The signal was low-pass filtered at numerous cutoff frequencies and speech recognition was measured as additional high-frequency speech information was provided to the hearing-impaired listeners. It was found in all cases, regardless of hearing loss or frequency range, that providing audible speech resulted in an increase in recognition score. The change in recognition as the cutoff frequency was increased, along with the amount of audible speech information in each condition (articulation index), was used to calculate the "efficiency" of providing audible speech. Efficiencies were positive for all degrees of hearing loss. However, the gains in recognition were small, and the maximum score obtained by an listener was low, due to the noise background. An analysis of error patterns showed that due to the limited speech audibility in a noise background, even severely impaired listeners used additional speech audibility in the high frequencies to improve their perception of the "easier" features of speech including voicing

The universal newborn hearing screening in Brazil: From identification to intervention

Objective: The objective of the study is to investigate the results of the newborn hearing screening program carried out in a Public Hospital in Brazil, in the first 3 years regarding: (1) the prevalence of hearing impairment; (2) the influence of the universal hearing screening program on the age at which the diagnosis of hearing loss is defined; (3) the cost effectiveness of the program; (4) the outcomes, in terms of the age in which the hearing rehabilitation started. Methods: A descriptive study of the first 3 years after starting the universal newborn hearing screening in a Public Hospital of Bauru, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. The screening method consists of a two-stage screening approach with transient otoacoustic emissions (TOAE), conducted by an audiologist. If the outcome in the second-stage screening is REFER, the infant is submitted to diagnostic follow-up testing and intervention at the Audiology and Speech Pathology Clinic at the University of Sao Paulo, campus of Bauru. The evaluation of the costs of the universal newborn hearing screening program per each screened newborn (around 4000/year) was done based on a proposal by the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management, of the Utah State University, United States of America. Results: 11,466 newborns were submitted to hearing screening, corresponding to 90.52% of the living newborns. The prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss was 0.96:1000. Of the 11 children with sensorineural hearing loss, eight children received hearing aids and five started the therapeutic process before the age of 1. Currently, four children between the ages of 11 months and 2 years old were submitted to cochlear implant surgery. The cost of hearing screening was US$7.00 and the annual cost of the universal newborn hearing screening program was US$26,940.47. Conclusion: The hospital-based universal newborn hearing screening carried out through the Brazilian National Health System is viable, with promising results. However, in a country such as Brazil, which presents large socio-economic differences, the same type of analyses should be performed in several regions, so as to take into account specific aspects, to implement the newborn hearing screening along with the Public System. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The behavioral relevance and top-down susceptibility of early, low level multisensory interactions in humans

Abstract (English)General backgroundMultisensory stimuli are easier to recognize, can improve learning and a processed faster compared to unisensory ones. As such, the ability an organism has to extract and synthesize relevant sensory inputs across multiple sensory modalities shapes his perception of and interaction with the environment. A major question in the scientific field is how the brain extracts and fuses relevant information to create a unified perceptual representation (but also how it segregates unrelated information). This fusion between the senses has been termed "multisensory integration", a notion that derives from seminal animal single-cell studies performed in the superior colliculus, a subcortical structure shown to create a multisensory output differing from the sum of its unisensory inputs. At the cortical level, integration of multisensory information is traditionally deferred to higher classical associative cortical regions within the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, after extensive processing within the sensory-specific and segregated pathways. However, many anatomical, electrophysiological and neuroimaging findings now speak for multisensory convergence and interactions as a distributed process beginning much earlier than previously appreciated and within the initial stages of sensory processing.The work presented in this thesis is aimed at studying the neural basis and mechanisms of how the human brain combines sensory information between the senses of hearing and touch. Early latency non-linear auditory-somatosensory neural response interactions have been repeatedly observed in humans and non-human primates. Whether these early, low-level interactions are directly influencing behavioral outcomes remains an open question as they have been observed under diverse experimental circumstances such as anesthesia, passive stimulation, as well as speeded reaction time tasks. Under laboratory settings, it has been demonstrated that simple reaction times to auditory-somatosensory stimuli are facilitated over their unisensory counterparts both when delivered to the same spatial location or not, suggesting that audi- tory-somatosensory integration must occur in cerebral regions with large-scale spatial representations. However experiments that required the spatial processing of the stimuli have observed effects limited to spatially aligned conditions or varying depending on which body part was stimulated. Whether those divergences stem from task requirements and/or the need for spatial processing has not been firmly established.Hypotheses and experimental resultsIn a first study, we hypothesized that auditory-somatosensory early non-linear multisensory neural response interactions are relevant to behavior. Performing a median split according to reaction time of a subset of behavioral and electroencephalographic data, we found that the earliest non-linear multisensory interactions measured within the EEG signal (i.e. between 40-83ms post-stimulus onset) were specific to fast reaction times indicating a direct correlation of early neural response interactions and behavior.In a second study, we hypothesized that the relevance of spatial information for task performance has an impact on behavioral measures of auditory-somatosensory integration. Across two psychophysical experiments we show that facilitated detection occurs even when attending to spatial information, with no modulation according to spatial alignment of the stimuli. On the other hand, discrimination performance with probes, quantified using sensitivity (d'), is impaired following multisensory trials in general and significantly more so following misaligned multisensory trials.In a third study, we hypothesized that behavioral improvements might vary depending which body part is stimulated. Preliminary results suggest a possible dissociation between behavioral improvements andERPs. RTs to multisensory stimuli were modulated by space only in the case when somatosensory stimuli were delivered to the neck whereas multisensory ERPs were modulated by spatial alignment for both types of somatosensory stimuli.ConclusionThis thesis provides insight into the functional role played by early, low-level multisensory interac-tions. Combining psychophysics and electrical neuroimaging techniques we demonstrate the behavioral re-levance of early and low-level interactions in the normal human system. Moreover, we show that these early interactions are hermetic to top-down influences on spatial processing suggesting their occurrence within cerebral regions having access to large-scale spatial representations. We finally highlight specific interactions between auditory space and somatosensory stimulation on different body parts. Gaining an in-depth understanding of how multisensory integration normally operates is of central importance as it will ultimately permit us to consider how the impaired brain could benefit from rehabilitation with multisensory stimula-Abstract (French)Background théoriqueDes stimuli multisensoriels sont plus faciles à reconnaître, peuvent améliorer l'apprentissage et sont traités plus rapidement comparé à des stimuli unisensoriels. Ainsi, la capacité qu'un organisme possède à extraire et à synthétiser avec ses différentes modalités sensorielles des inputs sensoriels pertinents, façonne sa perception et son interaction avec l'environnement. Une question majeure dans le domaine scientifique est comment le cerveau parvient à extraire et à fusionner des stimuli pour créer une représentation percep- tuelle cohérente (mais aussi comment il isole les stimuli sans rapport). Cette fusion entre les sens est appelée "intégration multisensorielle", une notion qui provient de travaux effectués dans le colliculus supérieur chez l'animal, une structure sous-corticale possédant des neurones produisant une sortie multisensorielle différant de la somme des entrées unisensorielles. Traditionnellement, l'intégration d'informations multisen- sorielles au niveau cortical est considérée comme se produisant tardivement dans les aires associatives supérieures dans les lobes frontaux, temporaux et pariétaux, suite à un traitement extensif au sein de régions unisensorielles primaires. Cependant, plusieurs découvertes anatomiques, électrophysiologiques et de neuroimageries remettent en question ce postulat, suggérant l'existence d'une convergence et d'interactions multisensorielles précoces.Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse sont destinés à mieux comprendre les bases neuronales et les mécanismes impliqués dans la combinaison d'informations sensorielles entre les sens de l'audition et du toucher chez l'homme. Des interactions neuronales non-linéaires précoces audio-somatosensorielles ont été observées à maintes reprises chez l'homme et le singe dans des circonstances aussi variées que sous anes- thésie, avec stimulation passive, et lors de tâches nécessitant un comportement (une détection simple de stimuli, par exemple). Ainsi, le rôle fonctionnel joué par ces interactions à une étape du traitement de l'information si précoce demeure une question ouverte. Il a également été démontré que les temps de réaction en réponse à des stimuli audio-somatosensoriels sont facilités par rapport à leurs homologues unisensoriels indépendamment de leur position spatiale. Ce résultat suggère que l'intégration audio- somatosensorielle se produit dans des régions cérébrales possédant des représentations spatiales à large échelle. Cependant, des expériences qui ont exigé un traitement spatial des stimuli ont produits des effets limités à des conditions où les stimuli multisensoriels étaient, alignés dans l'espace ou encore comme pouvant varier selon la partie de corps stimulée. Il n'a pas été établi à ce jour si ces divergences pourraient être dues aux contraintes liées à la tâche et/ou à la nécessité d'un traitement de l'information spatiale.Hypothèse et résultats expérimentauxDans une première étude, nous avons émis l'hypothèse que les interactions audio- somatosensorielles précoces sont pertinentes pour le comportement. En effectuant un partage des temps de réaction par rapport à la médiane d'un sous-ensemble de données comportementales et électroencépha- lographiques, nous avons constaté que les interactions multisensorielles qui se produisent à des latences précoces (entre 40-83ms) sont spécifique aux temps de réaction rapides indiquant une corrélation directe entre ces interactions neuronales précoces et le comportement.Dans une deuxième étude, nous avons émis l'hypothèse que si l'information spatiale devient perti-nente pour la tâche, elle pourrait exercer une influence sur des mesures comportementales de l'intégration audio-somatosensorielles. Dans deux expériences psychophysiques, nous montrons que même si les participants prêtent attention à l'information spatiale, une facilitation de la détection se produit et ce toujours indépendamment de la configuration spatiale des stimuli. Cependant, la performance de discrimination, quantifiée à l'aide d'un index de sensibilité (d') est altérée suite aux essais multisensoriels en général et de manière plus significative pour les essais multisensoriels non-alignés dans l'espace.Dans une troisième étude, nous avons émis l'hypothèse que des améliorations comportementales pourraient différer selon la partie du corps qui est stimulée (la main vs. la nuque). Des résultats préliminaires suggèrent une dissociation possible entre une facilitation comportementale et les potentiels évoqués. Les temps de réactions étaient influencés par la configuration spatiale uniquement dans le cas ou les stimuli somatosensoriels étaient sur la nuque alors que les potentiels évoqués étaient modulés par l'alignement spatial pour les deux types de stimuli somatosensorielles.ConclusionCette thèse apporte des éléments nouveaux concernant le rôle fonctionnel joué par les interactions multisensorielles précoces de bas niveau. En combinant la psychophysique et la neuroimagerie électrique, nous démontrons la pertinence comportementale des ces interactions dans le système humain normal. Par ailleurs, nous montrons que ces interactions précoces sont hermétiques aux influences dites «top-down» sur le traitement spatial suggérant leur occurrence dans des régions cérébrales ayant accès à des représentations spatiales de grande échelle. Nous soulignons enfin des interactions spécifiques entre l'espace auditif et la stimulation somatosensorielle sur différentes parties du corps. Approfondir la connaissance concernant les bases neuronales et les mécanismes impliqués dans l'intégration multisensorielle dans le système normale est d'une importance centrale car elle permettra d'examiner et de mieux comprendre comment le cerveau déficient pourrait bénéficier d'une réhabilitation avec la stimulation multisensorielle.

A comparative study of the creative expressions in paint and clay of deaf and hearing children

This paper discusses the results of study to determine differences in artwork done by hearing impaired and normal hearing children.