The Assessment of Pragmatic Skills in Young Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children.

The development of pragmatic skills does not often receive attention by professionals who are recommending or undertaking assessment of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, yet social communication is vital for linguistic, social, emotional, and academic development. We acknowledge the challenges that DHH children have with pragmatic skills, advocate for monitoring of pragmatic development for all DHH children by medical professionals, and provide direction for assessment of pragmatic skills in young DHH children, particularly for clinicians and teachers who are tasked with that work. Pragmatic assessment is challenging because it must involve observations of the child in interaction with a communication partner, either directly during a specific interaction or through the reflections of a familiar adult. In this article, we recommend two complementary assessment procedures for young DHH children who use spoken language. Assessment 1 recommends that a parent or caregiver completes The Pragmatic Checklist to provide a picture of the child's functional communication. In assessment 2, the information gained through the checklist is complemented by using direct observations of a child in interaction with an adult or a peer. The Pragmatic Protocol uses a video-recorded conversation sample between the child and familiar person that is analyzed by a DHH professional for 30 different pragmatic behaviors. We conclude this article with a recommendation for pediatricians and health care professionals to monitor pragmatic developmental milestones in DHH children, to refer them for pragmatic assessments, and to collaborate with researchers to develop valid, reliable tools that adequately capture the pragmatic skill strengths and needs of DHH children.

The Effects of Theory of Mind Training on the False Belief Understanding of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Prekindergarten and Kindergarten.

Data from a growing number of research studies indicate that children with hearing loss are delayed in Theory of Mind (ToM) development when compared to their typically developing, hearing peers. While other researchers have studied the developmental trajectories of ToM in school-age students who are deaf, a limited number have addressed the need for interventions for this population. The present study extends the current research on ToM interventions to the Prekindergarten and Kindergarten levels. This study used a single-case multiple baseline design to examine the effects of a ToM intervention on participants' false belief understanding as well as outcomes on a near generalization measure and a far generalization measure. A ToM thought bubble intervention (i.e., a visual representation of what people are thinking) developed by Wellman and Peterson (2013 Deafness, thought bubbles, and theory-of-mind development. Developmental Psychology, 49, 2357-2367) was modified in key areas. Results from the Single-Case Design portion of the study indicate a functional, or causal, relation between the ToM intervention and the participants' acquisition of the targeted skills in each stage although progress was not uniform. Results from the pre-post assessments indicate that the children did make progress up the scale. These results inform the field in regard to the efficacy and feasibility of a ToM intervention for young deaf children.