Study to target teaching speech to hearing-impaired infants

Not much is known about the babies’ developing attention to maternal speech and language ability.

STAFF REPORT

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — Research has shown that new parents using “baby talk” to coax grins and giggles out of their infants help speed development of language and speech skills in children with normal hearing.

That earliest form of communication, particularly coming from mothers with a singsong quality and clearer enunciation of sounds, has proved beneficial.

How hearing-impaired infants develop those skills, and what can be done to help them and their parents maximize the likelihood they’ll be able to use language and speech effectively, are the goals of a nearly $2 million project involving two Bowling Green State University faculty members.

Laura Dilley, an assistant professor of psychology and communication disorders, and J. Devin McAuley, an associate professor of psychology, are working on the project with Dr. Tonya Bergeson, the project leader from the Indiana University School of Medicine.

The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders is funding the research for five years, through mid-2012, with BGSU’s share of the total just under $400,000.

The importance of singsong maternal speech to infants learning language is driving the project, said McAuley, explaining that babies must figure out where words are in speech and “baby talk” aids that recognition. Further affirming its value is babies’ boredom with a monotone delivery, he said.

Infants with normal hearing are more attentive to the melodious speech and more able to learn language when tuned in to it, added Dilley.

Little is known, though, about how hearing-impaired infants, especially those with hearing aids or cochlear implants, develop attention to maternal speech and language ability, she said.

The IU School of Medicine performs cochlear implantation which can directly stimulate the auditory nerve, sending signals to the brain and providing some degree of hearing.

However, the sound signals are distorted, which presents “quite a large hurdle to overcome” for children with limited or no experience with language, Dilley said.

Knowing how hearing-impaired infants respond to speech gives an idea of how they’re learning language, she said, but how does a mother respond to the challenge of speaking to a hearing-impaired child? When a child is hearing impaired, research findings have shown more repetition and simple utterances, and less responsiveness from parents.

They may not realize what they’re doing and that it may affect how the child learns, McAuley said. As Dilley put it, they may be unwittingly undercutting the child’s chances of learning language because of the subpar input they’re providing.

In the ongoing project, Bergeson is studying behavior of hearing-impaired infants and how their mothers talk to them. The collected data is being sent to BGSU for analysis, including acoustic analysis.

The project is long to allow tracking of the participating children’s language development, Dilley said. It also has possibilities for substantial impact, she said, pointing out that the biggest concern of parents with a hearing-impaired child is if their child will be able to understand and speak language.

“It would be very empowering for those parents” to be able to help their child simply by changing their speech, she said. “This project has the potential to identify which course of action they could be taking to help the child articulate language and understand spoken language.”