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.

Problems with remote learning for children with hearing loss

I have been hearing from several parents asking for help with remote learning issues. The problems the kids are having should be expected: Masks are covering the teacher’s mouth so lipreading is not possible Masks, especially those close to the mouth are really distorting the speech signal The signal coming through the computer is further distorted When the teacher turns

Support Groups for Kids with Hearing Loss

As we know, most children with hearing loss find themselves in a classroom with no other children with hearing loss. They may pass other kids with hearing loss when they go to the audiologist, but they may not have many friends with hearing loss. While mainstream learning gives these kids amazing opportunities to be exposed to typical language, build literacy

Use of Remote Microphones at Home

This week’s Hearing Journal published an article by The Vanderbilt group (Thompson, Benitez-Berra and Tharpe) talking about the value of remote microphone systems for home use for children with hearing loss. I was delighted to see this article. This is something I have been pushing for a long time. The number or words a child hears is directly related to

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Educational Audiology in Schools

There is no doubt that children with hearing loss need educational audiology services in schools. There is also no doubt that there are not sufficient educational audiologists out there to meet the needs of the kids. As school budgets get cut, special needs kids have their needs cut. Some school districts share educational audiology services through cooperative services. Some consult

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Using Phoneme Perception to Modify CI Maps

I have been teaching some online courses in Australia and Singapore this last week. I have been talking about the Medial Consonant Test, developed by Rich Tyler at the University of Iowa in the early days of cochlear implants. At that time, candidates for implantation were adults who had long term profound hearing loss. The test was developed to help

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Duration of CI Use and Speech Recognition Outcomes

There has been a lot of research over the years about the relationship of hours of use of speech perception scores and hours of use of hearing aids and cochlear implants. Now we have some more data. It confirms that longer wear time is critical. Work by the Boy’s Town group has shown that children who wear hearing aids 10

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Masks, School, and Hearing Loss

Everyone with hearing loss or who works with children with hearing loss is aware that the mask problem during this pandemic is a nightmare. No matter how good you are at hearing with technology, masks are a problem. They muffle the speech signal and they eliminate the possibility of lipreading. Anyone with hearing loss has difficulty managing communicating with people

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AGBell virtual conference

Anyone who works with children with hearing loss should be a member of the AG Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. This is perhaps my favorite meeting to attend. AG Bell is a group that has as members audiologists, speech language pathologists, listening and spoken language specialists, teaches of the deaf and most important, families of children

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We MUST do Speech Perception Testing

I just read an article about using speech perception testing to validate hearing aid outcomes for adults. The article has a large box on the front page which says that it is not customary to do speech perception testing unless a patient is struggling enough to be considered for a cochlear implant. The author, Dr. Anna L. Mc Craney, is

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How Have Kids with Hearing Loss Managed in Online Classrooms?

One of my old babies has been a social worker in a large hospital for about 15 years. She has been doing discharge planning for patients leaving the hospital. She uses a cochlear implant and communicates extremely well. She does so well that people don’t even know that she has a hearing loss. At least, until now. While she has