Background: auditory rehabilitation in deaf children users of sign language.
Aim: to verify the effects of sound amplification on parent's communicative modalities when interacting with their deaf children.
Method: participants were twelve deaf children, aged 50 to 80 months and their hearing parents. Children had severe or profound hearing loss in their better ear and were fitted with hearing aids in both ears. Children communicated preferably through sign language. The cause-effect relation between the children's auditory skills profile (insertion gain, functional gain and The Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale--MAIS) and the communicative modalities (auditive-oral, visuo-spacial, bimodal) used by parents was analyzed. Communicative modalities were compared in two different experimental situations during a structured interaction between parents and children, i.e. when children were not fitted with their hearing aids (Situation 1) and when children were fitted with them (Situation 2). Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results: the profile of the deaf children's auditory skills demonstrated to be lower than 53% (unsatisfactory). Parents used predominately the bimodal modality to gain children's attention, to transmit and to end tasks. A slight positive effect of sound amplification on the communicative modalities was observed, once parents presented more turn-takings during communication when using the auditory-oral modality in Situation 2.
Conclusion: hearing parents tend to use more turn-takings during communication in the auditory-oral modality to gain children's attention, to transmit and to end tasks, since they observe an improvement in the auditory skills of their children.