Overview

The opportunities for children born deaf or hard of hearing are incredible today. Advancements in the areas of brain neuroplasticity, audiology, hearing technology including hearing aids and cochlear implants, speech-language pathology, deaf education, and early intervention have all contributed to this time in history when children with hearing loss can learn to listen and talk equal to their hearing peers.

Yet, teaching spoken language through listening as an intervention approach has received more limited attention in the literature and publications than audiology and hearing technology. This limited access of information has left an incredible void for professionals and parents at a time when children are being identified and fit with contemporary hearing technology within weeks of birth and 90 to 95% of families are choosing a spoken language outcome for their child. Auditory Verbal Practice fills this void and aims to meet the growing demand from professionals as well as parents for practical and specific information in the techniques and strategies to teach spoken language through listening by:

• Developing a rationale for the early detection and the early diagnosis of hearing loss and the initiation of early intervention services relative to brain neuroplasticity.
• Providing an understanding of the factors that have led to a paradigm shift in the field of hearing loss and the possibilities that exist for children today if we do what it takes.
• Defining and providing a framework for "auditory verbal practice" including the principles of AVT, the strategies and techniques that are the foundation of the practice and specific guidelines for their use in individual therapy with the parent as the primary language facilitator.
• Providing specific goals, plans and activitie for implementing the therapy at varying stages of development for children from birth through preschool.
• Defining and providing a framework for “parent coaching strategies” utilized by the authors in their own practices that facilitate an increase in parent skills with teaching their child to listen and talk. In addition, this information is supported by the body of work from learning theory including adult learning styles and information regarding the generational differences of the parents of the newly identified babies of 2011.
• Discussing special considerations in Auditory-Verbal practice including bilingual families, bilateral implantation, children with multiple disabilities, and specific challenges with the auditory dys-synchrony/auditory neuropathy diagnosis.

Audience

Primary Subject: Audiology / Pediatrics
Secondary Subject: Speech and Language Pathology / Language Development and Disorders
Audience Level: Professional/Textbook - Desk Copy

• Chapter 1: Auditory-Verbal Practice
  • Such a time as this for children born deaf and hard of hearing
  • Current trends resulting in improved outcomes for children
    • Brain neuroplasticity: The importance of early learning
    • Early diagnosis and management of hearing loss
      • Electrophysiological measures--ABR and OAE
      • Early Hearing Detection Intervention (EHDI): Impact and intervention
      • Access to audible and intelligible speech through aggressive audiologic management
    • Auditory-verbal principles and strategies to teach spoken language through listening
      • Principles of auditory verbal therapy and auditory verbal education
      • Certification in listening and spoken language
    • Involvement of families in the intervention and education process
      • Best practices in guiding and coaching parents
      • Studies of parent involvement
  • Changing paradigm: Create an auditory accessible world filled with auditory living
    • Crisis of Capacity
      • Shortage of trained personnel
      • Early intervention systems and educational systems in today's changing population
    • Developmental versus remedial models of intervention
      • Hart and Risley Study: The number of words a typical hearing child hears by age 4
      • Howard Study: The number of new vocabulary words a typical hearing child learns every one and a half hours
• Chapter 2: Auditory Function and Concurrent Development
  • Development of auditory skills: Detection, discrimination, identification, and comprehension
  • Auditory skill development and spoken language development
  • Concurrent development of speech, language, audition, cognition, and communication skills
  • Developmental skills coordinate to a child's hearing age rather than their chronological skills
  • Therapy targets and activities selected to a child's age, hearing age, cognitive ability, and listening ability
  • The diagnostic nature of auditory-verbal practice
• Chapter 3: Auditory Verbal Strategies and Techniques
  • Getting started on the listening journey: The importance of aggressive audiologic managements
    • Supporting families in reaching their desired outcomes
    • Facilitating parents as the primary language model for their children
  • Specific auditory-verbal strategies and techniques to teach spoken language through listening
    • Be a director: Directing the child to listen
    • Be a birddog: Pointing out sound
    • Hear it before you see it
    • Play by play: Using familiar phrases
    • It's your turn
    • Make it easier
    • Put it back into listening: Creating a listening sandwich
    • Beyond the here and now
      • Model and expand the child's utterances
      • Provide extensions to the child's utterances
    • Keep them on their toes
    • Help me, but don't tell me
      • What did you hear?
• Chapter 4: Implementing Auditory Verbal Strategies and Techniques
  • Creating auditory living every day in every way
  • Beginning with babies
    • Hallmarks of typical development at the baby stage
    • Auditory skill development: Detecting, localizing, and comprehending familiar phrases
    • Growing conversational competency
    • Suggested AVT treatment goals, lesson plans, and teaching activities
    • Literacy development
      • Books babies like
      • Literacy skills to expect
      • AV strategies that facilitate literacy development
  • AVT for toddlers
    • Hallmarks of typical development at the toddler stage
      • Motor development and exploration of environment
      • Adaptive skills development
      • Development of simple problem solving
    • Auditory skill development
    • Growing Conversational Competency
      • Beyond LTL sounds
      • Avoiding the "rut", "test questions", and the "hot seat"
      • Use of natural questions
      • Having conversations about the present
      • Expand use of vocabulary
    • Suggested AVT treatment goals, lessons plans, and teaching activities
    • Literacy Development
      • Books toddlers like
      • Literacy skills to expect
      • AV strategies to that facilitate literacy development
  • AVT for Preschoolers
    • Hallmarks of typical development at the preschool stage
    • Auditory skill development: Following multi-step commands, comprehending language out of the context of routine, and increased ability to sequence information
    • Growing Conversational Competency
      • Teaching asking and interviewing questions
      • Overhearing
      • Taking more turns within conversation
      • Understanding simple humor
      • Interacting in groups
      • Use of language to relate to personal events and tell simple stories
    • Suggested AVT treatment goals, lessons plans, and teaching activities
    • Literacy Development
      • Books preschoolers like
      • Literacy skills to expect
      • AV strategies that facilitate literacy development
• Chapter 5: Use of AV Practice to Develop Higher Order Thinking
  • Facilitating skill development and utilizing leveling
  • Facilitating conversational competence
  • Anatomy of a conversation
    • Initiating conversation
    • Taking appropriate turns
    • Maintaining the topic
    • Changing the topic
    • Clarifying the information heard
    • Conversation repair
    • Ending the conversation
    • Use of children's literature to facilitate conversation deployment
  • Facilitating theory of mind development
    • Defining theory of mind
    • Normal developmental stages of theory of mind
    • Types of questions to facilitate theory of mind
    • AV strategies that facilitate theory of mind
    • Use of children's literature to facilitate theory of mind
  • Facilitating narrative skill development
    • Defining narrative skill development
    • Relationship between ability to tell an organized story and reading comprehension
    • Use of AV strategies to develop narrative skills
    • Use of children's literature to facilitate narrative development
• Chapter 6: Coaching and Guiding Parents
  • Why coach family members?
  • AV Practice involves adult education
    • How adults learn: Learning style differences
      • Dynamic learner
      • Analytic learner
      • Common sense learner
      • Imaginative learner
    • Implications of adult learning styles and parent engagement in auditory-verbal practice
      • Consequences of learning style mismatches between the therapist and parent in the intervention process
      • Determining the learning style of each parent
      • Accommodating the learning style of parent(s) in all interactions
      • Targeting all adult learning styles
    • Generational differences
      • Characteristics of the Baby Boomer Generation: 1946-1964
      • Characteristics of Generation X: mid 1960s to 1981
      • Characteristics of Millennial Generation: 1981-2001
    • Implications of generational differences in engaging parents in auditory-verbal practice
  • The coaching process: Initiation, observation, action, reflection, summary, and evaluation
  • Top ten coaching parent strategies in AV practice
  • Final steps in the coaching process
  • Parent perspectives on the coaching in AV practice
• Chapter 7: Putting It All Together: Planning the AV Session
  • Tools of the trade: Setting up a therapy room
  • The critical elements of the AV therapy session
    • Functioning technology
    • Behavioral expectations
    • Listening postures
    • Therapy listening environment
    • Age-appropriate tasks and materials
    • Always include the "So What"
  • Components of an AV therapy session
  • The AVT treatment plan
    • Practical advice
    • Discussion of goal selections
    • Long-term goals across skill levels
    • Choosing short-term goals
• Chapter 8: Collaboration with Partners: The Information Exchange
  • Audiologists and AVTs as collaborative partners
  • Working with physicians as collaborative partners
  • Collaborative consulting with classroom teachers
• Chapter 9: Special Considerations in AV Practice
  • Bilateral cochlear implantation
  • Bilingual families
  • Children with multiple challenges
  • Auditory dyssynchrony spectrum disorders
  • Transitioning from sign language to listening and spoken language
  • The later, newer listener
• Appendices
  • Domains for Listening and Spoken Language
  • Resources for Listening and Spoken Language
  • Children's Literature List to Facilitate AV Practice
  • Treatment Goal Bank for Listening and Spoken Language
• Bibliography

About The Authors

Teresa Caraway, PhD, CCC-SLP

Teresa H. Caraway, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT, is an international leader in Auditory-Verbal practice. The Founder and President of Learning Innovation Associates, LLC, she thrives on encouraging and challenging others to achieve listening and spoken language outcomes for deaf or hard of children and their parents around the world. Audiences enjoy Dr. Caraway’s humor and wit as she pushes the boundaries of how to improve outcomes for children in this new millennium. Her areas of expertise include strategies to teach spoken language through listening, to guide and coach parents, adult learning, theory of mind development, staff development, mentoring, and program development. She has authored or co-authored a number of journal articles in these areas. Dr. Caraway has delivered keynotes and workshops in nearly all fifty states, Canada, Mexico, throughout South America, the Northern Marianna Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. She is the Co-Founder and former Co-Executive Director of the Hearts for Hearing Foundation and currently serves as Special Advisor. A Certified Listening and Spoken Language Specialist - Auditory Verbal Therapist, she served as the founding President of the AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language. Additionally, she is a founding board member of the American Cochlear Implant Alliance. Dr. Caraway has previously served as a Director of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, and Auditory-Verbal International (AVI). She has been recognized by her peers for outstanding clinical skills. A former Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Dr. Caraway skillfully blends research into clinical practice.

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K. Todd Houston, PhD, CCC-SLP

Dr. K. Todd Houston is an Associate Professor in the School of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at The University of Akron where he teaches courses related to aural habilitation/Auditory-Verbal Therapy, childhood language development and disorders, phonology, phonetics, and professional practices. His areas of research include spoken language acquisition in children with hearing loss, auditory and visual perception of spoken language, parent engagement in the intervention process, the parenting role of fathers for children with hearing loss, the use of social media, and telepractice/teleintervention as a service delivery model. Dr. Houston continues to write extensively on these topics and has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, editorials, and clinical white papers. As a passionate teacher and lecturer, Dr. Houston is also committed to preparing and mentoring professionals to serve children with hearing loss and their families, especially those who have chosen listening and spoken language as the desired outcomes.

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