Written by Rebecca Budde, SIU School of Medicine
About three out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with hearing loss in one or both ears, according to the National Institutes of Health. However, approximately 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. “These parents grew up with oral language as their main mode of communication, so that’s the mode that most will choose if they know it’s an option,” Caroline Montgomery says.
Montgomery, SIU’s listening and spoken language specialist, is helping children with hearing loss have a greater chance of having clear speech production and auditory speech perception. She is the only provider within a two-hour radius of Springfield offering this unique therapy.
Her interventional therapy uses modeling and imitation, a method developed by The Moog Center for Deaf Education in St. Louis. “Children are prompted with a question, and if there’s an error in the response, a correct model is provided. The expectation is that the child then repeats the modeled sentence correctly.” This method helps the child practice using grammatically correct sentences as well as learn to self-monitor and self-correct, according to Montgomery.
This technique develops all areas of language from articulation of sounds to the proper use of parts of speech in a complete sentence. “They really can have normal speech and language skills like their peers who don’t have hearing loss,” Montgomery says. “The goal is to start therapy immediately upon diagnosis of hearing loss.”
Rather than working just once a week on improving listening and language skills, Montgomery empowers parents to work with the child in a way that promotes listening and language-building skills in the home. “Learning happens all the time, and the home is the perfect place to build listening and spoken language with the kids,” Montgomery says. Sometimes, a familiar setting also allows the family to practice with language that would be more regularly used.
While state-provided services are available, Montgomery feels that these services don’t offer the audiological information and language development therapy that many families need. That’s where SIU specialists like Montgomery make an impact.
To learn more about this unique therapy and how it’s helped some of our young patients, read the Aspects article here or watch this video.
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