“I know how to handle bullying in my classroom!” may be a battle cry from any experienced and successful teachers, but the landscape of bullying has changed.

For starters, bullying most often occurs when adults are not watching. It happens online with social media or email or texting. It happens in private places where those who bully are most powerful and those who are bullied are most vulnerable.

Even more significantly, current research on bullying targets a high incidence of bullying in the deaf/hard of hearing student population.  Traditional approaches to modify and end bullying behaviors as well as methods and curricula for teaching social skills need an update.

Studies on the frequency of bullying with deaf and hard of hearing students – a jolting reality

• In 2018, the University of Texas found that adolescents with hearing loss endured significantly higher incidence of bullying versus the general population (50.0% vs. 28.0%), particularly for exclusion (26.3% vs. 4.7%) and coercion (17.5% vs. 3.6%). Children younger than 12 years with hearing loss reported lower rates of bullying (38.7%) than adolescents with hearing loss, but rates did not differ significantly. Author of the study, Dr. Andrew Warner-Cryz, revealed: “I thought more children and adolescents with hearing loss would report getting picked on, but I did not expect the rates to be twice as high as the general population”
• A 2018 study by Van den Bedem, N.P., published in the International Journal of Language and Communicative Disorders found that students who had lower language abilities were more vulnerable to victimization if they lacked understanding of their own emotions and levels of anger, sadness, and fear. Another red flag for teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing whose students may lack self-esteem, feel isolated, or different from the larger population of hearing students.
• A 2013 Gallaudet study on bullying and school climate found that 812 deaf and hard of hearing students in eleven U.S. schools reported instances of bullying at rates 2-3 times higher than reported by hearing students. Deaf and hard of hearing students reported that school personnel were less likely to intervene when bullying was reported. The study examined perspectives among deaf and hard of hearing students in residential and large day schools regarding bullying, and compared these perspectives with those of a national database of hearing students. The participants were 812 deaf and hard of hearing students in 11 U.S. schools. Significant bullying problems were found in deaf school programs.  Results indicate the need for school climate improvement for all students, regardless of hearing status.

Anecdotal stories support the findings.

In 2016, the story of a deaf high school student in Nebraska was reported on television news.  Students had taken his backpack during a lunch period and dumped it in a toilet.  Contained inside were his tablet, school supplies, homework, debit card, and his cochlear implant.  The student, Alexis Hernandez, reported: “Those students think it’s ok to bully a deaf student, but it’s not.  It’s not OK to bully someone who is disabled, deaf, or hard of hearing.  Or anyone for that matter.”

Incidents of “put downs,” teasing, rummaging in school bags or desks, and stealing among students in an urban program for deaf/hard of hearing students give further anecdotal support.  In one story, teacher reports to administration of teasing a deaf student about his speech and hearing aids went unheeded until parents called the principal directly.  After all, the principal had reasoned, there had been no physical harm.

Definitions:  Shaming, Blaming, and More

The National Deaf Children Society (NDCS) in the UK provides the following comprehensive description of bullying in their publication: “Bullying Advice for Parents of Deaf Children.”

Bullying may comprise one or more of these behaviors:

Verbal: name-calling, insulting, teasing, ridiculing

Emotional/indirect: ignoring or deliberately excluding, spreading rumors or nasty stories, turning friends against the child, laughing at them or talking about them behind their back, taking, hiding or damaging their personal belongings, drawing unkind pictures of the child, using a feature of the child’s disability to bully them, (e.g. deliberately making loud noises near a deaf child who is known to find loud noises unpleasant, creeping up on them from behind to scare them, deliberately making a noise when the teacher is giving instructions).

Physical: any physical contact which would hurt such as hitting, kicking, pinching, shoving, tripping up, pulling out hearing aids.

Manipulation/controlling behavior: using the child’s vulnerability as a way of controlling them or making them do something the bully wants them to do.

Cyberbullying: using electronic media (internet, mobile phones) to bully someone. This includes bullying through text messages, instant messaging, email, chat forums, online games and social networking websites.

Healthy Self Esteem is the Gatekeeper

If individuals value themselves, feel worthy, loved, able to handle rejections and bounce back – they possess qualities that naturally help guard against bullying, or becoming bullies.  Take teasing, for instance.  Although it can become ugly and demeaning, there is a place for gentle teasing that allows individuals to laugh at themselves in a healthy way.  We all make mistakes!  We’re “human.”

Self Esteem in Fictional Heroes

Two well-known stories give us perfect examples of what healthy self-esteem looks like. Characters in books or movies so often provide our best “teachable moments” for learning about behaviors in the real world. These are two heroes of fiction for kids of all ages: J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and R. J. Palacio’s Augie Pullman of Wonder.  

In her insightful work, “Harry Potter and Hearing Loss – A Whimsical Look at Similarities and Successes, ” Karen Anderson draws comparisons between J. K. Rowling’s famous Harry and his experiences as a new student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with the experiences of deaf/ hard of hearing students in the mainstream.

There were many times when Harry was an outcast, made fun of, and treated poorly by groups of students. He usually did not react or lash out at his tormentors… He did not ask to be special. But Harry, with the help of his friends and teachers, persevered, tried his hardest and was true to who he was as a person. Therefore he succeeded against all odds. 

Most children who are deaf or hard of hearing did not wish to have a hearing loss.  It is not fair that they need to wear amplification or have therapy and other services that most children do not need.  It is not fair that they face listening and understanding challenges in many situations that are effortless for their peers who have typical hearing…. Ultimately, children with hearing loss will be successful because they try hard an dhave support and assistance from their families and teachers. They need to believe in themselves and that they can succeed. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing, with the help of their families, friends, teachers, and therapists, must persevere and be true to who they are as people to be able to succeed in a hearing world.     

Entering a mainstream school for Augie Pullman in R. J. Palacio’s Wonder, is another example of confronting, and dealing with diversity. Augie’s facial deformities set him far apart from the norm, vulnerable to the stares and smirks of other students. He persevered, but not without the support of his family, friends, and teachers.

Two clear lessons about self-esteem from these two fictional characters: 

Positive self-esteem is an anchor (our “gatekeeper”).

It takes a “village” of support to maintain it.

Other Ways to Build Self Esteem

There are many exercises that can help foster a healthier sense of self esteem for our children and students.  A few suggestions for teachers and parents:

Allow mistakes and accidents to happen.

Do not shame and blame others

Accept differences in other people, families, cultures

Find the humor in your own missteps and mistakes

Make an effort to talk about the things for which you are grateful

Find ways to help others

CONFRONT Bullying HEAD ON:

Incorporate routine screening for bullying via direct questions⁶:

Ask the child about friends. A response of “none” or “few friends” deserves additional prompting (i.e., “Why do you think this is?”)  

Inquire if the child avoids going to school and find out why.

Ask the child directly if he or she has experienced bullying. If the child answers yes, ask follow-up questions and refer the child to school and community resources. .

Address developing skills to reduce victimization in the student IEP:

Issues related to peer victimization can be included on individualized education plans or 504 plans in the following ways:

Informing teachers and classmates about hearing loss.

Providing a safe environment statement to designate a “home base” where a student can go when feeling unsafe and/or a “safe person” with whom a student can discuss difficult situations.

Including strategies to reduce vulnerability by targeting social pragmatic skills (e.g., taking turns and asking questions; reading facial expressions and body language) via one-on-one instruction, role playing, or social stories.

For teachers:

Keep the discussion of bullying behavior alive and ongoing – not a lesson plan to be covered, completed, and put away.

Organize a social skills group to help children develop social competencies in a supportive environment.

Clinicians can also help patients address assertiveness and/or self-advocacy, with specific training to identify and report bullying, say “no” to stop the situation, and request assistance from a trusted source.

Give your students a safe and open communication pathway for reporting incidents of bullying.

Recognize that bullying will most often happen when you are not watching – In the lunchroom, the bathrooms, the playground, the hallways. Just because you did not see it does not mean it did not happen!

Be a listener.

Be supportive.

Report incidents to your school administration as promptly as possible.

For parents:

Talk to your child about feelings – openly and often. They need to know that when things go wrong, you will be there to support them.

Stay closely involved with school administrators and teachers.

Be ASSERTIVE with school personnel when your child reports bullying behaviors.

Cyberbullying – How do we deal with an invisible bully?

While our deaf and hard of hearing students find invaluable and positive connections online, the potential for negative interactions is, unfortunately, highly correlated with increased internet use.

PACER has developed a comprehensive website, PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center which lists the following attributes of online bullying:  a) electronic forms of contact, b) an aggressive act, c) intent, d) repetition, e) harm to the target (Hutson, 2016 ).

The technology, accessed through computers or cell phones, used to cyberbully includes: Personal websites, blogs, e-mail, texting, social networking sites, chat rooms, message boards, instant messaging, photographs, video games  Feinberg & Robey, 2009.

PACER concludes that those who are most at risk to cyberbullying are those who experience lower self-esteem, social isolation, and academic problems.

The joys of communicating online for our students who are deaf or hard of hearing are threatened by the simple act of “logging on.”

How Can We Be Proactive about Cyberbullying?

RECOGNIZE: By being fully aware of what websites are being used.  If we as adults continue to make excuses about our lack of skill or disdain for social media, we are inadvertently providing limitless opportunities for our children to be vulnerable to cyberbullying.

REACT: Explicit teaching about security and boundaries

Passwords cannot be shared, even with close friends.

Do not allow people to be “friends” on Facebook or Instagram unless they are real friends!

Do not post pictures on Facebook or Instagram without permission of each person in the picture. Even better: do not post pictures on Facebook or Instagram.

Do not respond to emails or texts from people you do not know.

RAISE AWARENESS:  The following is a comprehensive list of materials available on the  from Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center website.

Cyberbullying Starts Earlier Than You Might Think — Here’s How to Protect Your Child Now

What Every Parents Needs to Know About Protecting Their Child from Cyberbullying

Helping Your Child Understand Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying: What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Children

Safety in the Online Community: A conversation with your 13-year-old about Facebook and Instagram – Facebook and Instagram partnered with PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center to create this guide to help parents talk with their teens about using social media.

What Parents Should Know About Bullying – This guide, created in partnership with Verizon, offers a comprehensive overview for parents to learn what they can do to address and prevent bullying, featuring a section on mobile and online safety.

Teens Against Bullying on Cyberbullying – Teens Against Bullying is a place for middle and high school students to find ways to address bullying, to take action, and to be heard.

How to Prevent Cyberbullying: Hands Off the Keyboard Until You’re Calm!

http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/teaching-students-to-prevent-bullying

https://stompoutbullying.org/get-help/about-bullying-and-cyberbullying

https://www.lebonheur.org/blogs/practical-parenting/keeping-up-with-your-child-online

APPS TO LOCK INAPPROPRIATE WEBSITES:

Mobicip. This free app blocks sites, including chat sites and social networking apps that may be inappropriate, depending on the age of the user. There are three restriction levels.

FamiSafe. Designed to block inappropriate websites for business employees or family members.  Detects and alerts parents to explicit content on all social media platforms

Internet Blocker – Freedom.  Used worldwide to help protect children from harmful threats.

Cold Turkey.  This app will temporarily block websites from target devices.

References

Warner-Czyz, A. D., et. al. (2018) Effect of hearing loss on peer victimization in school-age children. Exceptional Children. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-children-loss-bullying.html . Download from: https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Children-with-hearing-loss-face-more-bullying-2018.pdf

2016 news: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/national/burke-high-school-investigating-bullying-incident-after-it-goes-viral

Van den Bedem, N.P., et al, (2018). Victimization, bullying, and emotional competence: Longitudinal associations in (Pre)Adolescents with and without developmental language disorder, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 2028-2044.

Goberis, D., Beams, D., Daples, M., Abrisch, A., Baca, R. & Yoshinaga-Itano, C. (2012). The Missing Link in Language Development of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Pragmatic language development. Seminars in Speech and Language, (2012), 33:4, 297-309.

Bullying Advice for Parents of Deaf Children. National Deaf Children Society in the UK. Download from: https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Bullying-Advice-for-Parents-of-Deaf-Children-NDCS-UK.pdf

Warner-Czyz, A. D. (2018). Peer victimization of children with hearing loss. The Hearing Journal, October. Download from: https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Peer_Victimization_of_Children_with_Hearing_Loss.4.pdf

Webpage posted October 2019. Author Jean Snowden, NBCT. Jean has had 30 years of experience as a teacher of the deaf in varied settings and also experience teaching English as a Second Language.  She has been an author of Language Strategies and Social Strategies sections of the Supporting Success Teacher Tools e-magazine. Jean is co-founder of Jack Apps Education and is a teacher-author at Teachers Pay Teachers.

The post Bullying and Students with Hearing Loss first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

Auditory Comprehension:

Speech perception is the set of listening skills that are essential for communicating by spoken language.  Speech perception skills can be described in four categories: awareness, discrimination, identification and comprehension. Each skill set is described on web pages in  the Listening (Auditory Skills) Development section.

These listening skills do not develop sequentially from one category to the next. Rather, a child might simultaneously be developing skills in two, three, or even all four categories, but at varying levels of complexity.
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Speech perception training also requires attention to the complexity of the listening task, or the amount of acoustic information in the message.  Generally, levels of complexity are described as the sound/phoneme level, word level, phrase/sentence level, and discourse/connected speech.

Auditory comprehension is understanding what one hears through listening. The student demonstrates  auditory comprehension of a message by responding to it using language that usually “references the stimulus but is unique in its content.”  (Estabrooks, 2000).

Two examples can illustrate how comprehension differs from identification.

Example of a Response that Demonstrates Auditory Comprehension

Adult: Hi. What’s your name?

Student: Norman! What’s yours?

Example of a Response that Demonstrates Auditory Identification

Adult: Hi. What’s your name?

Student: Hi. What’s your name?

Auditory comprehension of a message is dependent upon successfully performing ALL of these auditory response tasks:

Attention
Detection
Discrimination
Identification
Memory
(possibly localization)

It is ALSO dependent upon these characteristics of the message:

– Acoustic information (vowels, consonants, intonation, etc.)

– Vocabulary

– Word usage (e.g., idiomatic phrases)

– Grammar (passive voice, indirect objects, etc.)

AND on these characteristics of the student:

Auditory processing abilities                                           Motivation

Linguistic processing abilities                                          Cognitive abilities

Physical condition (hunger, sleep, fatigue)                     Mental State

We must also consider the characteristics of the talker:

Volume
Rate of speech
Clarity of expressing thoughts Clarity of articulation (accent, idiosyncrasies)
Accent or dialect
Ease of speechreading (moustache, etc.)
Familiarity

Finally, comprehension is affected by the environment in which the communication takes place:

Background noise                                     Reverberation

Auditory and visual distractions              Distance from the talker

Comprehension is where listening meets the real world in an attempt to engage in successful communication. Many of the characteristics listed are out of our control as educators and beyond the scope of this discussion. The professional who is mindful of the complexity of asking a student with hearing loss to demonstrate comprehension will nevertheless be better able to guide that student toward success.

Selected Component Skills of Auditory Comprehension

Tasks that require auditory comprehension typically occur at the phrase or sentence level through extended discourse such as conversation, small group or class discussion or listening to audio text.

Sustained Attention was discussed in the Auditory Awareness section. LINK. When students are asked to listen to and recall longer messages and greater amounts of information, they are practicing sustained attention and hopefully improving their stamina for listening.

Memory  Auditory Memory is the processing, storing and recalling of what one hears. Auditory memory is not a single entity, but has several facets, including memory for:

– words

– for phonemes

– for digits

– for rules

– for information heard in extended discourse

Scientists also study sequential memory and memory for numbers. All of this becomes auditory memory if the information was received through listening alone, with little or no visual support.

Informal Assessment of and Practice with Auditory Memory

Auditory memory is formally evaluated within cognitive assessments. These formal evaluations  should be administered by a professional, such as a psychometrist, speech language pathologist or audiologist.

Miller (1956) established that auditory memory of an individual has a limited capacity. Successful recall can be affected by the length and complexity of the message. It is generally accepted that the  number of objects an average adult can recall from short term memory is “seven, plus or minus 2”. Rhodes (2011) reports that by 6 years of age, a child “imitates a 16-syllable sentence, based on short-term recollection …. Remembers six items of a story … (and) repeats three numbers backwards.” Students with hearing loss often do not meet these milestones before entering school.

The criteria listed by Rhodes can be used to

– establish a baseline for each student

– identifying goals for progress

– determine a starting point for practice

Some suggested methods for checking and practicing auditory memory skills are offered here.  It is not necessary to use an auditory hoop for these tasks.

Memory for Words (or numbers)

1. Select 9 picture cards of objects (or numbers) within the student’s vocabulary. Explain the task to the student – you will list some words, and the student should remember and repeat them in the correct order. Encourage the student to give his or her best effort.

2. Choose 5 cards to start. Without showing the pictures to the student, name the objects one a time, with a 1- or 2-second pause between words. When you have read the 5^th word, have the student repeat the list.

3. Increase or decrease the number of words for the next set, based on the student’s success.

When a student’s baseline for recall of words is established, add one more word and practice three different sets each session. It is important to use different categories of words within one session to avoid ‘spillover’ from previous trials. Although recalling the order of the words is ideal (English grammar is sequential!), it is not essential in the beginning.  As the student builds memory skills, continue increasing the length of the list, up to the “Magic 7”.  Teachers of students with hearing loss have noticed that words with more than one syllable increase the difficulty of recalling the entire list, so one-syllable words are preferred for this task in the beginning.

Some students may need visual ‘markers’ for the words. If this is the case, after saying each word, place its picture face down in a row in front of the student, proceeding from left to right. The student can point to each picture and say the word. Turn over the pictures at the end of the student’s list to show which were correct. To reduce the visual support, after naming the picture, place it face down in a stack rather than a row.

Memory for Sentences

The context of a sentence aids in recall of the words within it. As with memory for words, counting syllables may be a more accurate way to predict the length of text a student can recall.

1. Select text within the student’s receptive language level. Based on the student’s auditory memory for words, break the text into meaningful phrases. Each phrase should contain the number of syllables (plus or minus one) corresponding to the student’s recall for words, as established in the previous task. Do not break up syntactic phrases (e.g., prepositional, adverbial, etc.).

2. Explain the task to the student. Read the first chunk, and have the student repeat it verbatim. The student should repeat each morpheme (e.g. prefixes and word endings).

3. If there are no errors, repeat Step 2. If there are errors in repetition of words, address them as described here.

– If a word is omitted, repeat the entire phrase. If it is omitted again, say, “You skipped a word,” and repeat the phrase again. If it is omitted a third time, say the omitted word, then repeat the entire phrase, adding emphasis to the omitted word. The student should repeat the phrase correctly. If not, note the error and continue with the next piece of text.

– If a morpheme (such as final -s or past tense marker) is omitted, repeat the entire phrase. If it is omitted again, say, “Listen carefully to the [word endings, prefixes, etc.],” and repeat the phrase again. If it is omitted a third time, say the erroneous word, highlighting the missed morpheme, then repeat the entire phrase, adding emphasis to the omitted morpheme. The student should repeat the phrase correctly. If not, note the error and continue with the next piece of text.

– If a word is substituted (e.g., have for has) or inserted (e.g., adding a word not in the text), repeat the entire phrase. If the error occurs again, say, “Not [incorrect word],” and repeat the phrase again. If the error occurs a third time, say “There is no [inserted word]”, then repeat the entire phrase, slowing at the point of the incorrect insertion. The student should repeat the phrase correctly. If not, note the error and continue with the next piece of text.

– If the student repeats with incorrect word order, repeat the entire phrase. If the error is repeated, say, “You switched some words,” and repeat the phrase again. If the error is repeated a third time, say only the affected words. The student should repeat the affected words correctly. If not, note the error and continue with the next piece of text.

Memory for Information

Memory for spoken information is a more typical academic task, and requires a more global comprehension of the message, rather than a word-by-word recall.

To assess or practice memory for information, select a text within the student’s receptive language level. Choose a text about which you can ask wh- questions as well as higher level questions. The wh- questions will establish basic recall of what was heard. Successfully answering higher order questions, however, is essential for success in school.

Write down your questions prior to the activity.  You will use this paper to record what occurs during the activity.

1. Explain to the student that you will be reading a selection and then asking questions to find out what the student remembers about what you read.

2. Read the text naturally.

3. Ask your first question. If the student answers correctly, note that next to the question and ask the next question. If the student does not answer correctly, suggested responses are provided here. Note your responses next to the question.

– Ask the student to repeat your question back to you. Clarify the question if needed.

– Repeat the question then re-read the portion of the text that contains the correct answer. Include one or two sentences before and after the sentence containing the answer. Repeat the question.

– Address any vocabulary that may be unfamiliar.

– If the student is unable to answer correctly after two or three attempts, note the error, quickly explain the correct answer, and move to the next question.

The Impact of Language on Auditory Comprehension

If the content to which the student is listening uses language structures, vocabulary or background information beyond the student’s skills, the best of listening skills cannot produce a successful communication task.

Therefore,  one strategy for improving auditory comprehension is to build the student’s range of syntax, vocabulary, and background knowledge. Those tasks are beyond the scope of this text. Auditory memory and speech perception in general, however, is one set of  skills that can improve with instruction and practice and can contribute to better comprehension of spoken language.

More Auditory Comprehension Resources

Strategies for Improving Auditory Memory and Speech Perception Skills for Connected Speech – two free webinars from CID – Central Institute for the Deaf

Auditory Memory for Quick Stories – from Super Duper Inc.

ASSESSMENT

Assessment of Story Comprehension

OPUS – Oral Passage Understanding Scales

Listening Comprehension Test – 2 (elementary)

Listening Comprehension Test – Adolescent

TAPS-4  – Test of Auditory Processing Skills (memory, auditory discrimination, comprehension, phonological awareness)

CURRICULA

No Glamour  Memory

Look Who’s Listening Game

Spotlight on Listening Comprehension 4 book set (details, story comprehension, making inferences, reasoning and problem solving

SPICE – Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum & Evaluation

SPICE to Life Auditory Learning Curriculum

References

Estabrooks, W. (2000). Auditory Verbal Practice. The Listener, Summer, pp 6-29.

Miller, G. A. (1956). “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information”. Psychological Review. 63 (2): 81–97.).

Rhodes, Ellen. 2011. Auditory Developmental Scale: 0-6 Years.

Posted August 2019. This information was authored by Julia West, teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing who has taught students with hearing loss in private and public schools for over 20 years. She is co-author of the CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum and authors the Listening and Self-Advocacy sections of the Teacher Tools e-Magazine.

The post Auditory Comprehension first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

Auditory Discrimination:

Speech perception is the set of listening skills that are essential for communicating by spoken language.  Speech perception skills can be described in four categories: awareness, discrimination, identification and comprehension. Each skill set is described on web pages in  the Listening (Auditory Skills) Development section.

These listening skills do not develop sequentially from one category to the next. Rather, a child might simultaneously be developing skills in two, three, or even all four categories, but at varying levels of complexity.

Speech perception training also requires attention to the complexity of the listening task, or the amount of acoustic information in the message.  Generally, levels of complexity are described as the sound/phoneme level, word level, phrase/sentence level, and discourse/connected speech.

A discrimination task requires a student to perceive differences and similarities between two sounds, words or longer utterances. The properties being judged can be volume or intensity, duration, pitch, stress pattern or other feature. Discrimination tasks require a student to report whether two stimuli (never more) are “the same” or “different”.

Discrimination tasks are often confused with identification tasks. Some examples can clarify the two categories of listening tasks.

Comparisons of Discrimination and Identification Tasks

A Discrimination Task

Teacher: Tell me if these sound the same: shhh (pause)   ch .

Student: No, they sound different.

An Identification Task

Teacher: Point to the card that shows the sound you hear. (pause): shhh.

Student: (points to card) [Note: it is recommended that student also repeat the sound.]

OR

Teacher: Please tell me what you  hear: sheep.

Student: (optional: points to picture) sheep.

Teacher: Cheep.

Student: (optional: points to picture) cheep.

Although “Are they the same or different?” seems like a clear question, students can become confused about what the teacher is asking. Children who are often asked to identify the first sound or first letter of a word might say mop and mat are the same because they have the same first letter. An older student who is asked whether single and solo are the same might respond yes because they have similar meanings. When a teacher is asking a student to make an auditory discrimination it might be necessary to clarify what property the student should be comparing: the component sounds? number of syllables? stress pattern?

Auditory Discrimination and Students With Hearing Loss

Erber (1982) notes that professionals working with students who have hearing loss often use an auditory discrimination task to determine the cause of an erroneous response to a different auditory task.

A phonics lesson, for example, might ask a student to identify the letter associated with the phoneme -e- (as in bed) – an auditory identification task. If the student points the letter a rather than e, the teacher might check to see if the student perceives the acoustic differences between the short e vowel sound and the short a vowel sound.

During a discussion about farming wheat, a student who comments, “My mom doesn’t like wheat. She pulls it out and throws it away,” may be unfamiliar with the wheat plant and not hear the subtle difference between wheat and weeds.

In the above examples, the identification errors likely occurred because the phonemes -a- and -e-  and the words wheat and weed are acoustically similar and difficult to discriminate. The teacher could respond by asking, “What did you hear?” That question will prompt the student to produce a vowel or word that may not (due to an error in his speech production) match what he heard. Instead, the teacher can check the student’s ability to discriminate. Here are two examples of checking discrimination during the identification tasks described above.

Examples of Discrimination as Error Analysis and Remediation

                  Example A.

Teacher: Listen. Which vowel do you hear:  bed? (an identification task)

Student: (points to letter a)

Teacher: Oh. That says /-a-/. Are these two sounds the same or different?

Listen:  /-e-/ (pause) /-a-/?

      Example B.

Student (thought the teacher said “weed” when she actually said “wheat – an identification error)

Teacher: Those words are almost the same, but the last sound is a little different. Listen: wheat (pause) weed. Do they sound the same to  you?

In Example A, if the student says the phonemes sound the same, the student has made an auditory error. The teacher can give the student feedback like, “Yes, those sounds are very close to each other. They are almost the same. But they are a little different. Listen again.” The sounds can then be produced slightly elongated to highlight the differences. If the student is asked to say the sounds, he will likely produce two sounds that sound very, very similar to each other. This may be a task for the speech specialist. The teacher, however, can spend one or two valuable minutes saying the sounds as she points to the letters, then 1 or 2 minutes more having the student listen and decide which sound he hears, with the teacher giving immediate feedback.

In Example B, many students with hearing loss will not hear the difference between wheat and weed. The teacher can check the vocabulary by pointing to a picture of wheat and asking the student to name the plant. If the student is unable, the teacher can a quick explanation of the word, the differences between wheat, a product farmers sell and the weeds they kill or throw away.  She would then draw attention to the final letter and sound and move on with the lesson. Auditory practice may not be necessary because if this student had been familiar with the wheat plant as a farming product, the auditory error would probably not have occurred.

Improvement of Auditory Discrimination

Improving auditory discrimination may not be an objective on a student’s IEP, but as shown above, teachers can use targeted discrimination practice to improve auditory identification, an essential speech perception task. Here are some guidelines for quick and effective uses of discrimination practice in the course of an academic lesson.

– When the teacher first asks the student to discriminate between two stimuli , the teacher should produce the vowels (or words) as naturally as possible, without elongating them.

– Always let the student know if her response is correct and emphasize that the two sounds are very similar.

– The discrimination task should be presented at least three times, with one trial presenting the same vowel (or word) twice.

– If the first response was incorrect, the second and third trials can use a slightly exaggerated production to support better discrimination.

– If the student had difficulty discriminating the two items, provide additional practice in brief (3 minute) lessons. If the student’s accuracy continues to be lower than 80%, inform the audiologist. Difficulty in discriminating a pair of acoustically similar phonemes might indicate difficulty with other phonemes that are similar to each other, which should be evaluated.

More Resources for Auditory Discrimination

Free PD Webinars from CID – Central Institute for the Deaf

References

Erber, N. 1982 Auditory Training. A.G. Bell Association for the Deaf. Washington D.C.

CURRICULA

Learning to Listen Sounds Kit

CAST – Contrasts for Auditory and Speech Training

SPICE – Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum & Evaluation

SPICE to Life Auditory Learning Curriculum

Posted August 2019. This information was authored by Julia West, teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing who has taught students with hearing loss in private and public schools for over 20 years. She is co-author of the CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum and authors the Listening and Self-Advocacy sections of the Teacher Tools e-Magazine

The post Auditory Discrimination first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

Awareness:
Detection – Localization – Auditory Attention

Speech perception is the set of listening skills that are essential for communicating by spoken language.  Speech perception skills can be described in four categories: awareness, discrimination, identification and comprehension. Each skill set is described on web pages in  the Listening (Auditory Skills) Development section.

These listening skills do not develop sequentially from one category to the next. Rather, a child might simultaneously be developing skills in two, three, or even all four categories, but at varying levels of complexity.

Speech perception training also requires attention to the complexity of the listening task, or the amount of acoustic information in the message.  Generally, levels of complexity are described as the sound/phoneme level, word level, phrase/sentence level, and discourse/connected speech.

Auditory awareness can be described as a combination of three subsets of skills:  detection, localization and auditory attention.

DETECTION

Detection is the most basic of listening tasks, as it requires the listener to determine the presence or absence of sound, or of a particular sound. For children who have typical auditory development, detection of sound begins in the third trimester of pregnancy and continues to develop during the first year of life. (Werner)

During a hearing screening, the technician plays a tone and the client responds by raising a hand. This is a simple detection task. During a more extensive evaluation, the volume of the tone could be decreased to the point at which the client no longer hears it. That is the point at which detection ceases. This point is called the threshold. When we read an audiogram, the thresholds for each frequency, or pitch, of sound are marked, often with Xs and Os, to designate hearing levels at the left (X) and right (O).

DETECTION AND STUDENTS WITH HEARING LOSS IN THE SCHOOL SETTING

Professionals working with students who have a hearing loss should not forget that the student may not be hearing a particular sound, due to device failure, hearing fluctuation or a variety of other reasons.  A change in ability to detect or identify a sound can often be discovered quickly during a Daily Listening Check. LINK

Assessment of Detection

A student’s audiologist should ensure that the device settings allow the student access to the full range of speech sounds accessible to the student; however, these settings can become less effective over time.

Professionals working with a student can determine if the student can indeed hear all or most of the phonemes. Erber describes a subset of the Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure! (GASP!) to evaluate the student’s ability to detect speech sounds. Download the Modified Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure (GASP). The GASP presents ten vowel sounds and 12 consonant sounds, representing the full spectrum of the 44 phonemes of English. These sounds and procedures appear in the downloadable test above. Erber says the steps can be completed in 10 minutes. The remaining 22 phonemes could presumably be added, increasing the time needed to 20 minutes, for a complete assessment of phoneme detection.

Developing Phoneme Detection Skills

A new device recipient may need practice with detecting the full range of speech sounds. This training may or may not be provided by the student’s audiologist.  First, determine whether the student can distinguish between speech and non-speech sounds. Instruct the student to listen raise a hand when your voice is heard – not other sounds, just your voice.  Let the student know immediately whether the response is correct.

1.  Stand behind the student and wad up a piece of paper. Wait for a response.

2. Say, “bu-bu-bu”.

3. Knock 3 times on a table, door or wall.

4. Rub the wad of paper across the table.

5. Say, “sssshhhhhh”.

6. If the student is having difficulty responding correctly, move to a place where you can be seen. Repeat the steps several times so the student can learn the differences between the sounds. If the student continues to struggle, the family and audiologist should be notified.

The CID Speech Perception Instruction Curriculum and Evaluation (CID SPICE) Manual offers other guidelines to help a student build speech detection skills.

Start with extended sounds like repeated syllables (e.g. bu-bu-bu) or a continuous vowel (e.g., oooooooo, eeeeeeee).

Once you find a sound that is detectable, practice with that sound until it is detected with at least 80% accuracy, then add other sounds.

When moving to detecting words, which may be briefer than the extended sounds referred to above, consider choosing the student’s name as the first word to practice detecting.

A student with a profound high frequency hearing loss may not have the ability to detect quieter unvoiced sounds (e.g. /s/, /f/, /th/).

A more challenging task is to identify when a voice starts and ends. This can be practiced with the repeated syllables or a vowel. The student should signal when the voice begins to be heard and when it stops.

When the student can identify the beginning and ending of a continuous voice, move on to signaling the beginning and ending of a spoken phrase or sentence.

Older students can indicate that a sound was heard, by raising a hand or giving a verbal response. Younger students may respond better to a fun activity such as stacking blocks or rings or pulling popbeads when a sound is heard. To signal the beginning and ending of voicing, drawing a line, coloring a picture, or turning a light on and off or moving a puppet’s mouth while the adult is voicing can be fun.

Recognizing Detection Errors and Improving Detection Skills

The context in which spoken language occurs contributes greatly to understanding the message. A student who doesn’t hear the plural /s/ in a sentence that begins with, “Scientists investigated ….” will still probably understand the key content of the message. Difficulty hearing a specific sound has few serious consequences in school. Some exceptions are missing a final consonant on a spelling test (i.e. writing track for tract) or misunderstanding a name (Maria vs. Maryann). Detection errors can also lead to speech errors such as omitting /s/, /f/, /th/, /t/ and other soft sounds in a student’s speech production.

If a detection error is suspected, asking the student to repeat what she heard can be a quick check. If the student omits sound(s) in her response, cue her to the error by saying, “Oh, you missed a sound. Listen again.” Then repeat the word, sentence or phrase naturally. If she still can’t repeat correctly, then tell her the exact error, repeat the phrase and have her produce the word correctly. In this way, the student can become more aware of the sounds that are difficult for her to hear and may improve her speech perception and production abilities.

More Resources

Free PD webinar from CID – Central Institute for the Deaf

LOCALIZATION

Localization, the ability to locate the source of a sound, begins to develop within the first seven months of life and continues to improve as the child has more experience with hearing and listening. When localizing a sound, the brain compares the relative loudness of the sound at each ear. Sounds that originate from the right or left side of a person are easier to locate than sounds originating from in front or behind. Individuals with unilateral or imbalanced hearing loss (including imbalanced hearing levels with hearing devices) may have more difficulty locating the source of a sound.

LOCALIZATION AND STUDENTS WITH HEARING LOSS

Localization is important during class discussions and conversations with multiple people. Difficulty localizing can have academic consequences, as time and effort spent locating the talker reduces attention to the message and delays the support received from visual cues such as speechreading. Localization of environmental sounds can also be a safety issue in sports, traffic and other environments.

Assessment of Localization Skills

A discussion with the student with hearing loss can reveal the student’s perceptions of challenges with class discussions. Use open-ended questions, not yes/no questions. For example: Tell me about understanding class discussions. What is helpful? What is the hardest? When are you most successful?

Observe the student during small group or whole class discussions.  Note the number of people in the group.

a) Make a hash mark each time a different person begins talking.

b) Make a checkmark each time the student tries to find the talker.

c) Circle the checkmark if he was successful in finding the talker.

d) Put an x through the checkmark if he if he gave up before the talker finished.

e) Note any students who try to help the student with hearing loss follow the discussion

Turn your observations into data by calculating percentages.

— Rate of Attempts to Locate the Talker = c ÷ b (“c” is number of checkmarks)

— Rate of Successfully Locating the Talker = d ÷ b (“d” is number of circled checkmarks)

— Rate of Abandoned Attempts = e ÷ b (“e”  is the number of checkmarks with an x)

Observe the teacher during class discussions.

— Note any strategies the teacher uses to help students know who is speaking (see suggestions in the next paragraph)?

— Note any relevant rules posted in the room to guide class discussions. Note how many times those rules are followed or broken. Note number of times the students were reminded to follow the rules.

Addressing Localization Challenges

There is evidence that training can improve localization skills in adults with typical hearing, but there are few studies of localization training in individuals with hearing loss. Explain to students with hearing loss that turning the head can help localize a sound. Use the alarm on a phone to demonstrate and practice. Make sure the alarm tone and volume are audible to the student.

There are some simple steps that the classroom teacher can take that will benefit students during class discussions.

— When calling on a student to speak, use the student’s name and gesture toward them (with a nod or sweep of the hand).

— Establish the expectation that anyone who is speaking to the class will stand and use an appropriate volume.

— Use a pass-around microphone or the teacher’s FM microphone for anyone speaking to the class.

— Repeat or summarize each question or comment.

Using information and data from your observation, make a plan with the student, or with the student and teacher together to improve the student’s ability to follow class discussions.

More Resources for Localization

Curricula: Central Institute for the Deaf – CID SPICE for Life

AUDITORY ATTENTION

Auditory Attention is often discussed as a  figure-ground task –  the ability to attend to a spoken message in the presence of competing background noise. The Where’s Waldo challenges are a visual figure-ground task. Focusing on a specific voice in a sea of other human voices can be compared to searching for Waldo in a scene of similarly clad people.

When an individual is in a room full of people chatting in small groups, she filters out the conversations around her in order to focus on her own small group. The irrelevant speech become a low rumble as if it were distant thunder. Although this focused listening seems to happen without effort, it does require cognitive resources and listening effort to attend to a single stream of speech in a sea of spoken language.

Auditory Attention and Students with Hearing Loss

Students with reduced hearing levels are not the only ones who can struggle with auditory attention. Students with attention deficit disorder, auditory processing disorder, autism spectrum disorder and others may find it difficult to attend to a spoken message in the presence of background noise. Ability to attend can be affected by multiple factors, such as amount of sleep, nutrition, bodily comfort, emotional state, motivation, and interest in the topic, to name a few.

Gomes, et al describe four types of auditory attention: arousal, orientation, selective attention and sustained attention. Each of these are important for academic success. When students are working in small groups and the teacher begins talking to the whole class, each student needs to rouse to the teacher’s voice (arousal), shift attention from the conversation in the small group and focus on what the teacher is saying (orientation). Often, other students or groups of students do not cease talking in order to listen to the teacher. When this happens, the amount of background noise adds to the difficulty of focusing on the teacher’s message (selective attention). In addition to being alerted by the teacher’s voice and shifting attention, the student needs to be able to sustain attention for the duration of the teacher’s discourse or group conversation.

Assessing Auditory Attention

Auditory attention is just one way of attending to an activity – but it may be the most important part of attention at school. Consider the amount of information shared in the classroom by students and teachers using spoken language. Any student with poor auditory attention will be at a great disadvantage.

While there are formal tests of auditory attention, such as the Test of Variable Attention, observation may be the most convenient and informative assessment tool for a teacher. The Children’s Auditory Performance Scale can provide information about the student’s attention in a variety of listening conditions.

Another method is Momentary Time Sampling. Before beginning the observation, define the listening behavior you are measuring. Auditory attention is not a visible behavior. A student who is doodling may be listening carefully. A student rummaging through his desk is probably not. Set a timer to vibrate every 10 seconds.  When the timer vibrates, record whether the student was attending to the activity at that moment.  It can be helpful to also collect data on a classmate with typical hearing and compare the two data sets.

The Screening Instrument for Targeting Educational Risk (SIFTER) for preschool, elementary and middle through high school has three items that compare attention of a student with hearing loss to that of his or her classmates. The Children’s Auditory Performance Scale (CHAPS) for children 7 years and older has 8 items to compare auditory attention to that of other children of similar age and background in a variety of circumstances.

Developing Auditory Attention

Attention requires ongoing cognitive effort. Almost any error a student makes could be due to wavering attention. A mistake in the Ling Sound Check, an incorrect response in group discussion, a misheard spelling word. Whether the auditory task required detection, identification, discrimination or comprehension, a momentary lack of attention can have an impact on the student’s success with the task.

According to the International Listening Association, 45% of a student’s day is spent listening, and students are expected to acquire 85% of their knowledge through listening.

Students who haven’t been expected to listen in class (“She’s deaf, after all!”) may not have developed the stamina needed for sustained attention. A student may not recognize when their attention drifts from the teacher or even be aware that it’s possible for them to notice this. They may not know that simply hearing the teacher isn’t going to lead to learning.

Many students feel helpless when told they need to “pay attention”.  It can be helpful to explain a few principles of hearing and attention.

— Listening is different than hearing. Listening requires effort. Listening = hearing + attention. Younger students may understand the statement that “Listening uses your eyes, ears and”

— Each person has a degree of control over their attention, and exercising the attention ‘muscle’ can improve our sustained attention.

— No one can pay attention 100% of the time. Everyone’s attention drifts for a moment or even longer. Teachers may benefit from accepting this fact too! If a student is allowed to admit, without negative consequences, that they weren’t paying attention, the student might do so and ask for a repetition of what was said. This would increase engagement in the lesson.  Self-awareness of one’s own attention might also increase.

— For students still developing spoken language, they may need to learn how to ask for something to be repeated. This is also common in adults with hearing loss. Provide a variety of choices, such as, “I’m sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat it please?” “Could you repeat that, please?” or “Please say that again.”

Auditory Attention Resources:

Intervention Central  has suggestions,  activities and tools for building attention in the classroom

On Task Self- Monitoring Sheet

References

Erber, N. 1982 Auditory Training. A.G. Bell Association for the Deaf. Washington D.C.

Gomes, A. Christodoulou, C. Mollholm,. Cowan, N. The Development of Auditory Attention in Children. Frontiers in Bioscience. 2000.5:108-120.

Werner, LA. 2007 Issues in Human Auditory Development. Journal of Communication Disorders. 2007;40(4): 275-283.

CURRICULA

Learning to Listen Sounds Kit

CAST – Contrasts for Auditory and Speech Training

SPICE – Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum & Evaluation

Posted August 2019. This information was authored by Julia West, teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing who has taught students with hearing loss in private and public schools for over 20 years. She is co-author of the CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum and authors the Listening and Self-Advocacy sections of the Teacher Tools e-Magazine.

The post Auditory Skills – Awareness first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

Auditory Identification

Speech perception is the set of listening skills that are essential for communicating by spoken language.  Speech perception skills can be described in four categories: awareness, discrimination, identification and comprehension. Each skill set is described on web pages in  the Listening (Auditory Skills) Development section.

These listening skills do not develop sequentially from one category to the next. Rather, a child might simultaneously be developing skills in two, three, or even all four categories, but at varying levels of complexity.

Speech perception training also requires attention to the complexity of the listening task, or the amount of acoustic information in the message. Generally, levels of complexity are described as the sound/phoneme level, word level, phrase/sentence level, and discourse/connected speech.

An auditory identification task asks the student to name what was heard – by repeating, writing, or pointing to text or a picture.  The daily listening check LINK is an identification task that asks the student to repeat which of six sounds (or silence) was heard. Giving other information about a spoken utterance may also be an auditory identification task: naming the number of syllables or words, the stressed syllable, the first sound, the last word, etc.

Auditory Identification and Students with Hearing Loss

Auditory identification requires the student to perceive the vowels, consonants and sometimes, the stress pattern of what is spoken.

Examples of Common Identification Tasks

A first grader looking at the words tub, tube, cub and cube is asked to point to the word she hears. This decoding task also requires her to hear and identify the initial consonant and the vowel sounds of the stimulus word.

People discussing different opinions

A high school teacher asks students to explain some cultural differences in northeastern and western Africa. To answer correctly, the student needs to hear and identify the initial consonant-vowel combinations of two key words: northeastern (not southeastern or southwestern)  and western (not eastern).

During a listening check, the adult says “oo” and the student responds “m”. One may conclude that the student detected, or heard, the adult’s voice, but did not perceive the sound correctly and therefore made an error in identification of the phoneme.

Evaluating the Acoustic Similarities of Phonemes and Words

The professional working with students who are deaf or hard of hearing – especially those using listening and spoken language — should be able to evaluate the acoustic properties of a spoken utterance and determine how to best help the student be successful with a given listening task. Here are some guidelines.

Vowels

• Vowels generated primarily in the same area of the vocal tract (front or back, high, mid or low) are more acoustically similar to each other than to other vowels.
• A diphthong is a vowel that glides from one sound to another and is easier to distinguish from the non-diphthong vowels than the non-diphthong vowels are to each other.
  • Long i (bite) glides from -o- (bot) to ee (beet)
  • Long a (bait) glides from -e- (bet) to ee
  • ou (bout) glides from -o- (bot) to -oo- (book)
  • oi (boy) glides from aw (bought) to ee (beet)

Consonants

Consonants that are similar in manner (occurring in the same row on the Consonant Chart) are more similar to each other than consonants on other rows in the chart.

Identification errors are more common when students with hearing loss are listening to solely fricatives and affricates. (Erber, 1982)

Words that contain several nasals and glides (m, n, r, l, w,y) can be difficult to identify using hearing alone.

English Consonant Chart by the University of Arizona.  Consonants produced in a similar manner, such as Fricatives, are more difficult to distinguish from each other, but easier to distinguish from consonants produced in a different manner, such as Nasals.

Informal Assessment of Auditory Phoneme & Word  Identification Skills

Formal assessment of speech perception skills should be performed by a trained audiologist using a “battery of tests … in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of a child’s capabilities.”  A teacher with concerns about a student’s perception of phonemes and words can gain information about his ability to identify vowels and consonants using Indiana University’s Minimal Pairs Test. This information can be helpful to the professional in determining what auditory objectives can be selected for practice.

A student’s speech production can also give us information about his speech perception, so one method of informal assessment is to listen to what the student says.  Is he substituting  /ch/ for /j/? Are his vowels hard to distinguish? Make notes of those errors, and use them to guide your assessment. For an informal evaluation, write each phoneme you want to check (for example /d/ and /j/) on a card.  Using an auditory hoop, present each phoneme several times and have the student repeat what he hears and point to its letter. If he both repeats incorrectly and points to the wrong letter, he has misheard the sound – an auditory error. If he points to the correct letter but says the incorrect phoneme, his error is in speech production, not auditory identification.   If he says the correct phoneme, but points to the incorrect letter, it may be a phonics error, not an auditory error.

Improving Auditory Identification of Phonemes and Words

To prepare for practice with auditory identification the teacher will select the stimuli to be used and select a student response task. During the lesson, the teacher will respond to errors and adjust the difficulty of the task to ensure student success with the skill. The size of the set can be increased if the task was easily mastered or decreased if it was too difficult. The difficulty can also be decreased when selecting the phonemes and words for each set. Phonemes that are more similar to each other (and words that contain similar phonemes) will make identification more difficult. 

Improving Auditory Identification of Phonemes and Words – Selecting the Stimuli

Many auditory development curricula, like the CID SPICE  or CAST, structure lessons by beginning with sets of two stimuli that are very different from each other acoustically.  As skills progress, the size of the set is increased and the stimuli become more similar (and possibly more complex). When the student is successful with a fairly large set of very different words, then words that are more acoustically similar can be selected. It may be necessary to return to a small set size when the auditory task becomes more difficult.

Refer to the consonant and vowel charts above to clarify the following example.

Example of Examining Similarity of Acoustic Content of Words

Set of 2 Words with very different acoustic content.

stimuli: comb vs wish

CONSONANTS

         comb /k/ voiceless velar, /m/ voiced nasal (low frequency)

         wish /w/ voiced glide, /sh/ voiceless fricative  (high frequency)

VOWELS

          comb /oa/ back

          wish /-i-/  front

Improving Auditory Identification of Sentences and Discourse

The same principle of adapting set size and acoustic similarity of the stimuli applies when practicing auditory identification of longer stimuli. For these tasks, the teacher will consider these acoustic properties of the stimuli.

Length of the utterance (number of syllables) — Identification may be more difficult when all choices have the same number of syllables.

Similarity of the key words (vowels, consonants and number of syllables) — As explained above, similarities among phonemes can make identification more difficult.

Number of key words – Poor auditory memory can cause stimuli with more key words to be more difficult to identify.

Position of key words – (first word, medial or last word in utterance) Key words are more easily identified when they occur at the beginning or end of a sentence, rather than in the middle.

Amount of contextual or visual support (e.g. choosing from sentences provided in print, discussion about a picture, discussion about a specific topic, or questions about and a variety of topics) Identification is made easier in the presence of context cues such as printed choices, or a picture or a single known topic to talk about.

Listening for Words within Sentences – Selecting the Stimuli

When listening for words within longer utterances, the linguistic context in which a word appears contributes to identification. For example, if a student is asked to repeat the word “doctors,” she may incorrectly say “lockers.”  If the same word appears in a discussion about community workers, however, the student who thought she heard, “Lockers spend years in college to earn a medical degree” will probably infer that the speaker actually said doctors, not lockers. (This is assuming the student has the background knowledge that doctors earn medical degrees.)

The content of a sentence can also contribute to the difficulty of identifying a specific word within the sentence. If the target word is embedded in a carrier phrase, like “Show me the ____”, it will be easier to identify than if it occurs within a unique sentence. Consider these examples.

Example A. The teacher says, “Show me the elephant.”  Student points to elephant.

Example B. The teacher says,  “The circus performer rode an elephant,” then asks, “What did the circus performer ride?”

Example C. The teacher says, “The elephant was ridden by the circus performer,” then asks, “What did the circus performer ride?”

Example A is a multiple choice task, the least difficult of the examples. The student is looking at a set of pictures or objects and chooses the picture that matches the word that was said. The key word also falls in a predictable location in the sentence. Key words at the end of a sentence are more easily identified due to the absence of a word following it. It is recommended that in addition to pointing, the student be required to repeat the word. This promotes the student’s self-monitoring of his own speech production. An error in speech production, however, should not be counted as an error in auditory perception.

Example B is more difficult than Example A because the student is unaware of the position of the key word until after the sentence has been spoken and the question is asked. The teacher could have asked, “Who rode the elephant?”

Example C is the most difficult of the three examples. The key word is unknown to the listener until the question is asked and it occurs in the middle of the sentence where it is affected by coarticulation with the surrounding words. Furthermore, the sentence is in the passive voice, which is challenging for students who are learning spoken language.

Sentence Identification – Selecting the Student Response Task

Sentence identification tasks can require a variety of responses. Examples of responses, from easiest to more difficult, are:

1. choose the sentence that was heard from a set of written sentences
2. complete a partial sentence
3. repeat the sentence word for word (“tracking”)
4. write the sentence

Writing the sentence is the most difficult of these tasks because in addition to memory, spelling and fine motor skills are accessed, increasing the cognitive complexity of the task.

When a student is asked to repeat a sentence word for word, the student’s auditory memory  and working memory will affect her success with the task. Some teachers report, for example, that students who were asked to recall and repeat a list of spoken words were able to repeat fewer words when those words had more than one syllable

Repeating the sentence may also contribute to language improvement by requiring attention to the ‘little’ words (e.g., the, to, in, etc.)  that are often barely audible in spoken language and frequently omitted in the language of some students with hearing loss. Practice with continuous discourse tracking can promote awareness of those little words.

Continuous discourse tracking provides practice with auditory identification practice at the phrase or sentence level. The process was recommended by DeFilippo et al (1978).

1. The teacher, using an auditory hoop to prevent speechreading cues, reads aloud from a text within the student’s language level. The length of the each spoken segment is also determined by the teacher based on the student’s language level, auditory memory skills and attention.
2. The student repeats verbatim what is heard. When the student makes an error, the teacher repeats the portion of the segment that includes the error until the student repeats correctly.
3. This procedure is followed for a timed interval of three to five minutes. At the end of the interval, the  number of words correctly repeated is divided by the number of minutes to obtain a words per minute score. By graphing this score for each session, the student and teacher can see an improvement in speech perception over time.

DeFilippo suggests limiting the repetitions to three so as to avoid frustration. Any words that weren’t repeated by the student are marked as an error and not included in the count of words repeated.

By requiring the student to repeat each word and morpheme (e.g. -ed, -s), the student is required to attend closely to these important linguistic markers.  This may contribute to improvements in the student’s spoken language skills.

Practicing Auditory Identification – Structuring the Lesson

Teach and learn words written on two pieces of puzzle

After establishing the need for practice, selecting the stimuli and choosing a task (when necessary),  most auditory identification lessons follow these steps, with the exception of continuous discourse tracking previously described.

The teacher explains the objective of the lesson and describes any strategies that will help the student be successful.

(If using pictures or text for the student to look at) The teacher places the stimuli in front of the student. The student names or reads each item. The teacher clarifies any errors. If clarification cannot be made, that item is removed. (If using pictures of text for the student to look at).

The teacher ensures she has the student’s attention, then points to each item and names it or reads it. At this time, the student is allowed to use speechreading cues.

The teacher raises the auditory hoop to cover her entire face and says the phoneme, word, phrase, or sentence. The student responds by pointing to the item and/or repeating it. Even when asked to point to the correct item, the student should also repeat it to provide practice in self-monitoring, speech production, and language development.

If the student’s response is correct, the teacher gives praise. If it is incorrect, the teacher repeats the stimulus. If the response is still incorrect, the teacher may repeat the stimulus with an adaptation such as:

• Speak more slowly
• Exaggerate a salient feature of the stimulus
• Allow speechreading (do not use the auditory hoop)

If the response is still incorrect after the third repetition, then point to the correct item while repeating the word. If the student continues to struggle in subsequent trials, reduce the size of the set or change to a discrimination (same or different?) or detection task to allow the student to be successful.

Regardless of the student’s level of success, provide positive feedback and discuss strategies.

Practicing Auditory Identification  — Adapting the Difficulty of the Task

During practice, the student’s most recent response may lead to an adaptation of the next task. If the student responded without effort to the previous task, the teacher may choose to make the next task slightly more difficult to allow the student to remain successful while being challenged to improve auditory skills.

Increasing the Difficulty

Erber describes strategies to make a task more difficult.

Choose words or phonemes that are more acoustically similar.

Speak more quickly and naturally.

Move further from the child.

Add background noise.

Increase the size of the set.

Give two stimuli at a time, student should repeat and point to both.

Embed words or phonemes in a carrier phrase such as, “Show me ____.”

Decreasing the Difficulty

When the goal is improvement of auditory speech perception it is important to give feedback and supports to help the student be successful. If a student is struggling, pause from the exercise to provide that support. Point out the special features of the words or phonemes that might make them easier to identify. Use visual and tactile cues to make the differences between the sounds more salient.  Praise the student’s efforts and set a goal for the end of the lesson.

 Example of providing support for student struggling to identify /ch/ and /sh/

“Can you feel the tongue pushing the roof of your mouth when you say /ch/? Try it. [Student produces /ch/]  Now say /sh/. The tongue stays down [Student produces /sh/.]  Did you feel that? …Okay, we’ll do two more. Remember to listen for that tongue pushing.”

It’s a good idea to end each lesson with a successful task. Adapting the task can help a student be more successful, less frustrated and more willing to participate in the next auditory challenge. Here are some ways to reduce the difficulty of a task.

Repeat the stimulus, more clearly and slowly.

Highlight distinguishing features of the stimuli.

Allow speechreading.

Reduce the size of the set.

Choose words or phonemes that are less similar.

The goal is for the student to identify words or phonemes with 80% accuracy in an open set without regard to the acoustic content. This goal, however, may not be attained by all students, based on a variety of factors. If the task was identifying phonemes or words, ask yourself , In what real life situation will the student need to correctly identify this word in isolation, with no contextual clues at all? If the challenging task was identifying or tracking sentences or discourse, perhaps the student would benefit from practice applying strategies for communication repair. LINK

Always remember two key principles:  This is teaching, not testing and end on a high note with a correct response. .

More Resources for Auditory Identification

Free webinars from CID – Central Institute for the Deaf

Auditory Hoop

Continuous Discourse Tracking

KTH software is “a sentence-level speech-perception training program designed to help the client develop awareness of sensory information, contextual evidence, and improve auditory listening skills. … (A) story is read by the clinician a line at a time, requiring the client to repeat it back verbatim.” Provides extensive data.   Free download, funded by federal government grants.  .

References

De Filippo et al 1978) C L, Scott B L. A method for training and evaluating the reception of ongoing speech. J Acoust Soc Am. 1978;63(4):1186–1192.

Erber, N. 1982 Auditory Training. A.G. Bell Association for the Deaf. Washington D.C.

CURRICULA

Auditory Skill Development Cards for Classroom Listening (No Glamour Auditory Processing Cards)

Learning to Listen Sounds Kit

Look Who’s Listening Game

CAST – Contrasts for Auditory and Speech Training

SPICE – Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum & Evaluation

SPICE to Life Auditory Learning Curriculum

Posted August 2019. This information was authored by Julia West, teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing who has taught students with hearing loss in private and public schools for over 20 years. She is co-author of the CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum and authors the Listening and Self-Advocacy sections of the Teacher Tools e-Magazine.

The post Auditory Identification first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

Learning how children develop the ability to understand spoken language and know how those skills can be expanded and refined can empower us to accelerate the development of spoken language for students with hearing loss.

Auditory Skills Development: In Utero through 7 Years

Although auditory development is thought to begin in the third trimester of a pregnancy, not until after birth is an infant exposed to the full range of sound due to the filtering effect of the mother’s body. After birth, a newborn does not hear at the same level (0-20 dBHL)  as adults (Tharpe & Ashmead) and  is less aware of frequency changes, especially in higher frequency sounds. This means that speech will not be heard clearly for an infant in the first six months of life.

Six months after birth, an infant has a 15-20 dB hearing deficit, or ‘slight’ hearing loss. In the presence of background noise, the six-month-old infant will still have difficulty detecting a tone. This decreased ability to listen in noise will continue until a child is 6 to 8 years old.

Auditory perception is further refined during early childhood. Werner (2007) states, “It is clear that throughout the preschool and early school years, children continue to learn about the acoustic details in the sounds they hear and to extend their ability to distinguish sounds in a variety of listening conditions.”

By 8 or 9 years of age, a typically developing child’s hearing level and ability to hear phonemes in a variety of environments are similar to that of adults.

At 12 years of age, however, children can demonstrate poorer speech perception than adults. (Hazan & Barrett)

More details about auditory development in infancy and childhood is shown in the table below.

Auditory development, even with an intact hearing system, is an extended and perhaps highly individualized process. It is also an essential set of abilities for those who communicate with their world using spoken language.

Resources for Auditory Development

CHECKLISTS

https://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/for-professionals/listening-auditory-skills-development/

Auditory Learning Guide

Auditory Development Scale: 0-6 years

CID – Central Institute for the Deaf Free online courses

CURRICULA

Learning to Listen Sounds Kit

CAST – Contrasts for Auditory and Speech Training

SPICE – Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum & Evaluation

SPICE to Life Auditory Learning Curriculum

REFERENCES

Cole, EB, Flexer, C. 2011 Children with hearing loss: Developing listening and talking (2^nd ed.) San Diego CA: Plural

Hazan V, Barrett S. The development of phonemic categorization in children aged 6-12. Journal of Phonetics 2000;28:377-396.

Owens, RE. 2012. Language development: An introduction (8^th ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Tharpe AM, Ashmead DH. 2001 A longitudinal investigation of infant auditory sensitivity. American Journal of Audiology 2001; 10:104-112.

Werner, LA. 2007 Issues in Human Auditory Development. Journal of Communication Disorders. 2007;40(4): 275-283.

Posted August 2019. This information was authored by Julia West, teacher of the deaf/hard of hearing who has taught students with hearing loss in private and public schools for over 20 years. She is co-author of the CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum and authors the Listening and Self-Advocacy sections of the Teacher Tools e-Magazine.

The post Typical Auditory Development first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.

In those situations, the school must either have the in-house service available to evaluate hearing ability via a hired or contracted educational audiologist OR they are required to pay for a clinical audiological evaluation to be performed. If the family has sought a recent hearing evaluation as part of their child’s standard medical care, then that audiogram can fulfill the requirement for hearing evaluation information, if the family consents to sharing this information with the school. The school cannot require the family to pay for a hearing evaluation as a precursor to the eligibility determination process.

When would a school be required to pay for a hearing evaluation?

The school must have the results of a hearing evaluation as part of the process to determine if a student with suspected hearing loss is eligible for specialized instruction.

The IDEA requires that,
to establish eligibility, schools must:

“
use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the child, including information provided by the parent.” (34 C.F.R. 300.304(b)(1)).

The child is
assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, i
ncluding, if appropriate, health, vision,
hearing, social and emotional
status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities; (34 C.F.R. 300.304(b)(4)).

Under 34 CFR §300.306(c)(1)(i), in interpreting evaluation data for the purpose of determining whether the child is a child with a disability under Part B of the IDEA and the educational needs of the child, the group of qualified professionals and the parent
must draw upon information from a variety of sources, including aptitude and achievement tests, parent input, and teacher recommendations,
as well as information about the child’s physical condition, social or cultural background, and adaptive behavior.

Under 34 CFR §300.306(c)(1)(ii), the public agency must ensure that information obtained from all of these sources is documented and carefully considered. There is nothing in the IDEA or the Part B regulations that would prohibit a State from requiring that a medical diagnosis be obtained for purposes of determining whether a child has a particular disability (such as an audiogram determining the presence of hearing loss),
provided the medical diagnosis is obtained at public expense and at no cost to the parents, and is not used as the sole criterion for determining an appropriate educational program for the child. Further, if a State requires a medical diagnosis consistent with the above criteria, such a requirement exceeds the requirements of Part B of the IDEA. Under 34 CFR §300.199(a)(2), the State would be required to identify in writing to the LEAs located in the State, and to the Secretary, that such rule, regulation, or policy is a State-imposed requirement that is not required by Part B of the IDEA and Federal regulations.

When determining a child’s hearing status, the LEA’s
evaluation should be thorough and rigorous. Such evaluations should include a data-based speech perception assessment, be based on a range of learning modalities (including auditory and visual), and include a functional hearing evaluation.
An assessment of a child’s hearing status generally would include the nature and extent of the child’s hearing impairment and its effect on the child’s ability to learn to participate in the classroom, comprehend verbal communication, read, write, do mathematical calculations, and use computers and other assistive technology,
as well as the child’s ability to be involved in and make progress in the general curriculum offered to nondisabled students. Such an evaluation generally would be closely linked to the assessment of the child’s present and future reading and writing objectives, needs, and appropriate reading and writing media. The information obtained through the evaluation generally should be used by the eligibility team in determining whether it would be appropriate to provide a child who is deaf or hard of hearing with special education or related services as required by the IDEA. In addition, because the evaluation must assess a child’s future needs, a child’s current hearing status should not necessarily determine whether it would be inappropriate for that child to receive special education and related services while in school.

Information adapted from Office of Special Education Programs
Policy Letter on students with visual impairment.

The post Schools Paying for Hearing Evaluation first appeared on Supporting Success For Children With Hearing Loss.