Jane Madell

Jane Madell, PhD, has a consulting practice in pediatric audiology. She is an audiologist, speech-language pathologist, and LSLS auditory verbal therapist, with a BA from Emerson College and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Her 45+ years experience ranges from Deaf Nursery programs to positions at the League for the Hard of Hearing (Director), Long Island College Hospital, Downstate Medical Center, Beth Israel Medical Center/New York Eye and Ear Infirmary as director of the Hearing and Learning Center and Cochlear Implant Center. Jane has taught at the University of Tennessee, Columbia University, Downstate Medical School, and Albert Einstein Medical School, published 7 books, and written numerous books chapters and journal articles, and is a well known international lecturer.

Classroom Listening With Cochlear Implants

Newman, Wroblewski, Hajick and Rubenstein (2012){{1}}[[1]]Newman, A, Wroblewski, M, Hajicek, J, and Rubenstein, A (2012) Measuring speech Recognition in Children with Cochlear Implants in a Virtual Classroom, J. Speech, Language, Hrng Res; 55, 532-540.[[1]]have published a very interesting article in the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research describing a study they conducted to try and assess how children with cochlear

WHAT INFORMATION DOES THE AUDIOLOGIST NEED FROM FAMILIES AND INTERVENTIONISTS

In my last blog I discussed what kind of information audiologists needed to give to families and interventionists. This week I want to talk about what kind of information families and interventionists need to give to the audiologist. We, as audiologists, cannot really do our job if we do not get information from those who see these kids more often

WHAT INFORMATION DOES THE AUDIOLOGIST NEED TO GIVE TO FAMILY AND INTERVENTIONISTS?

Best results for kids will be obtained when everyone who works with kids communicates well. So what do families, auditory verbal clinicians, speech-language-pathologists and others need to know from the audiologist? Too many families and clinicians have complained to me that they just can’t read audiology reports. They are written in some foreign language and are not intelligible. We write

HEARING “s”

The most important reasons for fitting hearing aids is to permit access to speech information. One of the most important sounds for kids to hear is “s”. Why? Well, “s” provides critical grammatical information: • pluralization (boot, boots), • present vs past (she put it on, she puts it on) • 3rd person present (she eats) • Possessive pronouns, (hers,

HELPING FAMILIES ACCEPT TECHNOLOGY

With early identification, and high quality technology, most kids with hearing loss have enormous potential to learn to use audition to learn language. For them to do so successfully, it is essential that they wear technology full time. This requires an active commitment on the part of families. But getting parents to accept and use technology is not always easy.

A SUPPORT GROUP FOR KIDS

I had an extraordinary day yesterday. (Isn’t audiology fun!!) My colleague Nancy Schumann (speech-language pathologist and auditory verbal therapist) and I ran a support group for kids 9-12. We had 7 kids from 4th through 7th grade. They had varying degrees of hearing loss from moderate to profound. Some kids wore hearing aids, others cochlear implants. All were mainstreamed and

UNILATERAL HEARING LOSS – HOW SERIOUS IS IT?

How much trouble is a unilateral hearing loss? How much does it interfere with listening, learning and literacy? Well, it varies from person to person but we cannot assume that it is not a problem. Some parents feel that unilateral hearing loss is a problem and others feel that if a child has one good ear he or she will

AUDITORY BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: THE KEY TO DEVELOPING LISTENING, LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

This issue of of Hearing and Kids was written by my good friend Dr. Carol Flexer. She is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Audiology, The University of Akron. She is an international lecturer and author of more than 155 publications, and is a past president of the Educational Audiology Association, the American Academy of Audiology, and the AG Bell Academy

COUNSELING GROUPS FOR KIDS

As I discussed in last week’s post, audiologists need to work more towards helping kids talk about feelings about living with a hearing loss. Some discussion can take place during audiological evaluations. When we discuss test results with kids we can watch kids’ faces and see if they are comfortable. As we give them the opportunity to ask questions we

TALKING TO KIDS ABOUT HEARING LOSS

When a hearing loss is identified, we all spend lots of time talking to families. We help them understand basics of hearing loss, how to read an audiogram, management options etc. Babies obviously do not get much counseling. But as kids get older, we really need to revisit all these topics with them. This hit me many years ago (I