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Most common
causes :
Otitis Media
(OM)
Acute OM:
with infection lasts 2 – 3 weeks.
Subacute OM:
fails to clear and lasts for 3 weeks to 3 months usually with effusion.
Chronic OM:
lasts more than 3 months with or without tympanic membrane perforation and
drainage
(Flexer, 1994 p.44)
“Hearing
loss and eardrum abnormalities may persist for weeks or even months after
acute otitis media”
(Bergstrom, 1988 p.41)
Ear Wax
(cerumen) is also a common cause. |
Pure tone audiometry with a hearing level of 10-50 dB (Diefendorf,
1996 p.5)
Differentiated from sensorineural loss by at least a 10 dB HL difference
between bone conduction and air conduction in pure tone tests AND
by an
abnormal result from impedance measures including the tympanogram, static
compliance and acoustic reflex.(Roeser
& Northern, 1988 p.14)
VISUAL by
otoscopy |
Either by
antibiotics or
Left to
heal itself
(Glasziou
et al., 2001) or
Drainage
by myringotomy and Grommet insertion to provide air and improve the
conduction of sound waves to the inner ear (Dingle
et al., 1997)
Cerumen
(Ear Wax) removal by a doctor or audiologist. |
Hearing loss 30dB (range 10-50 dB)
Poor auditory reception
Degraded and inconsistent speech signal
Difficulty understanding under adverse listening conditions
Impaired speech discrimination
HL overlays developmental requirement for greater stimulus intensity
before infants can respond to and discriminate between speech
Inability to organize auditory information consistently (Diefendorf,
1996 p.5) |
May
have normal word discrimination when the signal is made sufficiently loud
May
speak softly
(Roeser,
1988p. 14)
Difficulty hearing against background noise
Reduces Childs ability to benefit from passive learning, thus need to be
taught directly what many children learn incidentally (Flexer,
1994 p.19)
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Difficulty forming linguistic categories (plurals, tense)
Difficulty in differentiating word boundaries, phoneme
boundaries (Diefendorf,
1996p. 5)
If pro-longed or frequent may have a significant effect on language
development and speech
(Bergstrom,
1988 p. 40) |
Lower
achievement test scores
Lower
verbal IQ
Poorer
reading and spelling performance
Higher
frequency of enrolment in special support classes in school
Lower
measures of social maturity (Diefendorf,
1996p. 5)
Between
10% and 40% of classroom instruction may be missed (Blair,
1996p. 321)
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Classroom Acoustics analysed and improved by :
Teachers voice signal to noise ratio +15 dB (ASHA,1995)
Reverberation reduced to no greater than .0.4 -0.6 s (Finitzo-Hiever
& Tillman, 1978).
Ambient noise level should be no higher than 35 dBA (Smaldino
& Crandell, 1995)...
Installation of an FM sound-field amplification system to help achieve
the above requirements e.g.(Crandell
& Smaldino, 1995, Flexer, 1995, Palmer, 1997)
Possibly the use of Neural re-training may help - e.g.
FastForWord (Scientific
Learning Corporation)
Earobics (Cognitive
Concepts, 2002)
Or
Sound therapy (Pittelkow,
2001)
Perhaps the following general “good teaching” strategies may also help:
Specific teaching strategies
gaining attention
short sentences
eye contact
pause between sentences
restate simply
monitor child and repeat
when necessary.
.. hearing,
listening and
compliance
rules established
(Rowe
& Rowe, 2000)
Tips for
Teaching Boys include:
Highly
structured lessons
Greater
emphasis on teacher-directed work in preference to group work…(Rowe
& Rowe, 2002 p.18)
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