APA: Yoshinaga-Itano, C., & Apuzzo, M.-r. L. (1998). Identification of Hearing Loss after Age 18 Months Is Not Early Enough. American Annals of the Deaf. 143(5), 380-87.

Resesarch Design and Description: This article utilized an experiment design. The purpose of this experiment “was to see if children identified with hearing loss in the period from birth to age 6 months perform better than children identified with hearing loss until after age 18 months.” It was written for professions in the area of deafness and NOT for parents. The technical language would not be parent-friendly.

Hypothesis: The authors hypothesize that children that are identified prior to 6 months of age and have intervention immediately following their detection will out-perform children idetified after 18 months of age.

Did it work? Was the research convincing? I felt that the research was very convincing. The variety of research that was sighted lended to its credibility and the results of the experiment prove the hypothesis. “The benefit of early intervention may be that individuals who receive eraly identification and intervention do not experience significatant developmental delays, as their peers with similar hearing loss do.”

Key Parts to this Piece of Work:

  • Average Age of Identification
  • Average Age of Onset of Intervention
  • Methods-
  • Subject

o  Age at Testing

o  Socioeconomic Status

o  Mode of Communication

o  Cognitive Ability

o  Degree of Hearing Loss

o  Parents’ Hearing Status and Onset of Intervention

o  Type of Intervention

o  Evaluation Tool

o  Design

  • Results
  • Conclusion
  • Notes and Footnotes
  • Tables
  • References

Veracity of the Data: This article presents a wealth of data from many sources. It is clear that the authors took a great deal of time in their research of this topic prior to conducting their experiment. It is worth mentioning that the authors sighted great statistics and also stated contradictions that were evident. They also took time to control as many variables as possible prior to the experiment.

This information would be useful when speaking with local officials about the necessity for early identification and intervention.

Resulting Questions and Insights:

  • Why the age gap between 6 months and 18 months?
  • Is there a good place to explore the various testing intruments, their validity, and rather they have deaf norms or do we have to research each one by name?
  • Why is some data presented in a paragraph and other data in a table?
  • The infants in the sample were all part of only one program (limited area for the test group). Why?
  • Under Mode of Communications is “home-sign” included?
  • The authors noted an insight in the conclusion of this article regarding the importance of adjusting the definition of the term”early identification and intervention to include only those children identified with hearing loss prior to 6 months of age.”