Infant vocalizations and the early diagnosis of severe hearing impairment☆,☆☆,★,★★
Section snippets
Normally hearing subjects
Seventy-three infants were followed longitudinally from the age of 2 months. Infants were recruited by mail solicitation to participate in a study of vocal development. Only infants with unremarkable perinatal and postnatal histories were studied. Twenty-one infants were preterm. Selection criteria for the preterm infants included birth weight between 1400 and 2100 gm and absence of either congenital defects or prenatal or postnatal complications. Infants were excluded if they had evidence of
RESULTS
Figure 1 illustrates that each of the 94 preterm or term infants with normal hearing began canonical babbling before 11 months of age. The onset of canonical babbling for infants with normal hearing ranged from 3 to 10 months (mode, 7 months). In contrast, none of the 37 infants with hearing impairment had an age at onset of the canonical stage before 11 months of age. The onset of canonical babbling for infants with hearing impairment ranged from 11 to 49 months (mode, 24 months). Thus there
DISCUSSION
The key results of this study are as follows: (1) infants with severe to profound hearing impairment are significantly delayed in the onset of canonical babbling, a precursor to the development of meaningful speech; (2) there is no overlap in onset distribution of canonical babbling between hearing-impaired and normally hearing infants, and the failure of canonical babbling to start may be taken as a marker of extreme risk of severe to profound hearing impairment; (3) parents are good
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We thank T. J. Balkany, MD, and E. Bancalari, MD, for their helpful comments, and Lynn W. Miskiel and Barbara J. Lewis for their help in assessing the infants with hearing impairment.
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Cited by (0)
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From the Mailman Center for Child Development and the University of Miami Ear Institute, Departments of Psychology, Pediatrics, and Otolaryngology, University of Miami, Miami, Florida
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Supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Development (No. 5 R01 DC00484; Dr. Oller) and from the U.S. Department of Education/ National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (No. H133 G10118; Dr. Eilers).
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Reprint requests: Rebecca E. Eilers, PhD, Mailman Center for Child Development, PO Box 016820, Miami, FL 33101.
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0022-3476/94/ $3.00 + 0 9/20/51165