Auditory verbal intervention for the infants with hearing problems.

There has not been much evidence about rehabilitation results for the infants with hearing problems under age 1 even though the 1-3-6 principle of early diagnosis and intervention was accepted worldwide. In this study, we tried to reveal auditory verbal intervention effects for the infants with hearing problems followed by the principle. A total of 50 babies and their caregivers participated. The average hearing thresholds of the babies were worse than 80 dB HL(B) and they were fitted HAs or CIs except 5 babies with no hearing prosthesis. The average age of the participants at the initial assessment was 7.3 months and the average age at the final assessment was 12.6 months. After the initial assessment, their development was closely followed in the 8 developmental areas of sound responses, listening skills, receptive & expressive language, speech development, oral functions, social interactions, and cognitive communication with auditory verbal approach. Their initial developmental rate was 0.55 and the rate had been accelerated up to 1.8, however, after 6 monthintervention, final development rate was 0.76 which had not reached to the normal rate of 1. There were large individual differences as expected, in average, the area of cognitive communication was the most developed area while the area of speech was the least developed area at the end of the intervention. Auditory verbal approach was suitable for the babies as well as their caregivers and could provide valid and timely information about the effects of prostheses they were wearing and the timing of changing devices for the babies. It would be more informative with longer period of the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]