ACQ Vol 13 No1 2011

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 1 2011 51
syndrome: What’s happening at home? Down Syndrome
Research and Practice, 12(2), 98–102.
van Bysterveldt, A. K., Westerveld, M. F., Gillon, G., &
Foster-Cohen, S. (2010, August). The personal narrative
skills of school-aged children with Down syndrome.
Poster presented at the 28th World Congress of the
International Association of Logopedics and Phonetics,
Athens, Greece.
References
Miller, J. F., & Leddy, M. (1998). Down syndrome: The impact
of speech production on language production. In R. Paul
(Ed.), Communication and language intervention series:
Exploring the speech-language connection (pp. 163–178).
Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
van Bysterveldt, A. K., Gillon, G., & Foster-Cohen, S.
(2008a). Intervention effectiveness for children with Down
syndrome: A follow-up. Paper presented at the The
American Speech-Language Hearing Association Annual
Convention, Chicago, Ilinois, 20–22 November.
van Bysterveldt, A. K., Gillon, G., & Foster-Cohen, S.
(2008b). Phonological awareness and decoding skills of
children with Down syndrome . Paper presented at the The
American Speech-Language Hearing Association Annual
Convention, Chicago, Illinois, 20–22 November.
van Bysterveldt, A. K., Gillon, G., & Foster-Cohen, S.
(2010a). Integrated speech and phonological awareness
intervention for pre-school children with Down syndrome.
International Journal of Language & Communication
Disorders, 4(3), 320–335.
van Bysterveldt, A. K., Gillon, G., & Foster-Cohen, S.
(2010b). Literacy environments for children with Down
Dr van Bysterveldt is a lecturer in the Health Sciences Centre at
the University of Canterbury. She is also an adjunct staff member of
the Champion Centre, a specialist early intervention centre for
children with developmental disabilities. Her research focuses on
speech, language, and reading development in young children with
Down syndrome.
Correspondence to:
Anne van Bysterveldt, PhD
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
email:
The Longitudinal Outcomes
of Children with Hearing
Impairment (LOCHI) study
A brief overview of interim findings
Teresa Y. C. Ching, Julia Day, Kathryn Crowe, Nicole Mahler, Vivienne Martin, Laura Street, Jo Ashwood
and Helen-Louise Usher
The LOCHI team
in 2010
One to two children in every thousand under the age of
3 have a permanent bilateral hearing loss of greater
than 40 dB HL and are fitted with hearing aids
(Ching, Oong, & Van Wanrooy, 2006). Permanent childhood
hearing loss impacts negatively on the communicative,
educational, and social developmental outcomes of
children. Several retrospective studies have established an
association between intervention before 6 or 9 months of
age and better language skills measured at 3 and 5 years
of age (Moeller, 2000; Yoshinaga-Itano, Sedey, Coulter, &
Mehl, 1998). Despite the frequent citing of these studies as
evidence in support of the effectiveness of early identification
in improving outcomes for children with permanent bilateral
hearing loss, the United States Preventative Task Force
(USPSTF; Thompson et al., 2001) conducted a systematic
review of evidence in 2001 and found that the “evidence to
determine whether earlier treatment resulting from screening
leads to clinically important improvement in speech and
language … is inconclusive because of the design limitations
of existing studies” (reported in Helfand et al., 2001). More
recent reviews (Nelson, Bougatsos, & Nygren, 2008; Wolff et
al., 2009) revealed that the evidence on the efficacy of early
intervention in improving language outcomes for children
with permanent bilateral hearing loss is weak.
In Australia newborn hearing screening is now at above
80% coverage in all states except for Victoria, with five
states now screening more than 95% of newborns.
Australian Hearing is the sole national service provider for
all children diagnosed with permanent hearing loss. Several
years ago, different Australian states were at different stages
of implementing universal newborn hearing screening, and
there was a narrow timeframe during which there were
sufficiently large numbers of children who received early or
later intervention from the same service provider (Australian
Hearing) using consistent protocols. The National Acoustic
Laboratories, the research arm of Australian Hearing,
captured this unique research opportunity in 2005 to
conduct a direct prospective comparison of outcomes for
children who received early or later intervention.