MESHGuides

Listening starts in the womb. At 24 weeks gestation the bones of the middle ear are fully formed. At 30 weeks a baby hears the rhythm and intonation of speech, can access some vowel sounds in the womb and recognises their mother's voice (Crystal, 2010).

Hearing loss can now be diagnosed at birth and studies have shown that early diagnosis, combined with early fitting of amplification and early support, results in language skills in line with peers (Yoshinaga-Itano, 2006).

Advanced Bionics (2015) Tools for Schools, Audiogram of familiar sounds [Online] Available at:  https://advancedbionics.com/content/dam/advancedbionics/Documents/librar... 14 February 2021].

Multiprofessional Support

A hearing loss will make is difficult to hear the sounds of speech. The degree of difficulty will depend on the degree of hearing loss. For mild, moderate and severe losses, speech will sound much quieter and muffled.  A child with a profound loss would not be able to access any speech sounds without amplification.

Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder (ANSD) is an inner ear hearing loss.

The auditory nerve does not process sound normally, resulting in ineffective transmission of sound from the cochlear to the brain.

Sound can be described as an 'out of tune radio' and it is difficult to understand speech, particularly in noise.

Attention: It is important to get the child’s attention before starting to talk to them.

A child with a severe to profound hearing loss will be offered an assessment for a Cochlear Implant. A Cochlear Implant is a different type of amplification. It has two parts, the implant which is surgically implanted under the skin and the audio processor which is worn externally.

Each sound of speech can be described in terms of pitch (frequency) and loudness (intensity). An understanding of the acoustic properties of speech is important to understand the impact of hearing loss on speech access. Speech sounds vary in frequency. Accessing the consonants of speech is important and 70% of word recognition comes from sounds in the frequency range of 500 to 2000Hz (Northern & Downs 2002).