Hearing and Kids

For children with hearing loss to succeed they need a village. The village is a big one. Obviously parents and extended family play a big role. They need therapists, teachers, physicians etc. But today I want to focus on the role of the audiologist.   Why is the audiologist important?   The answer is obvious. Audiologists are the people who

Dear Readers: During this holiday season, the editors at Hearing Health & Technology Matters (HHTM) are taking some time off. However, we are not leaving you without anything to read on our blog this week. Instead, we are publishing a special holiday edition filled with what we call our Readers’ Choices. Our Readers’ Choices featured this week are the posts

I have cheered cochlear implants for many years as everyone knows. When cochlear implants first came out I did not believe that they could possibly work. I thought “what a ridiculous idea.”  I have laughed at myself a lot about this. CI’s have changed the lives of so many people that is it difficult to believe. Clinically I have seen

There has been a lot of research which has demonstrated that with cochlear implantation, as with many other things, earlier is better. This is based on research on critical periods for brain development. Delay in auditory access results in auditory deprivation which decreases cortical plasticity over time. This effects both cognitive and linguistic development. And delays in linguistic development refers

The school year is well on the way. How do we know that our children with hearing loss are getting what they need in school? Only one way – someone needs to go in and observe. If we do not observe we really do not know if they are hearing well in the classroom, if they can follow conversation, are

There is a lot of data which shows that children with hearing loss who use hearing technology 10 or more hours/day have better language skills than children who do not use their hearing technology for 10 hours/day. Dave Sindrey has made a wonderful video for families in early intervention to help them understand why we need to monitor technology use:

I recently spoke at a conference sponsored by Phonak in Stockholm. It was a wonderful time to meet people. Fortunately, they speak English because I do not speak Swedish. I did learn a lot in spite of my limited language skills. One of the participants contacted me after the conference to ask me about using remote microphones in preschool. The

When I started working in this field (in the age of the dinosaurs) there were no services in schools for children with hearing loss. Families had to find services for children outside of school. As my career progressed things improved and services started to be available in the schools. Now things are turning around and it is again difficult to

Today’s blog is written by  Lydia Gregoret. She is an audiologist, scientist, teacher, and parent of two sons, one of whom is deaf and hears with cochlear implants. She began her career in academic research in the field of biochemistry and biophysics studying the “protein folding problem.” When her children were of school age, she focused on raising them and

Nina Kraus and her lab at Northwestern have done wonderful work in looking at auditory based learning disorders. They have reported that impaired auditory processing can have a significant effect of reading development. So, will a program of auditory therapy improve auditory processing and/or reading? Research has demonstrated that even a short three hour training program on phonologic awareness can