A Pilot Study of Early Storybook Reading With Babies With Hearing Loss
Published 20th September 2019
Michelle I. Brown, David Trembath, Marleen F. Westerveld and Gail T. Gillon
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This pilot study explored the effectiveness of an early storybook reading (ESR) intervention for parents with babies with hearing loss (HL) for improving (a) parents' book selection skills, (b) parent–child eye contact, and (c) parent–child turn-taking. Advancing research into ESR, this study examined whether the benefits from an ESR intervention reported for babies without HL were also observed in babies with HL.
Method: Four mother–baby dyads participated in a multiple baseline single-case experimental design across behaviors. Treatment effects for parents' book selection skills, parent–child eye contact, and parent–child turn-taking were examined using visual analysis and Tau-U analysis.
Results: Statistically significant increases, with large to very large effect sizes, were observed for all 4 participants for parent–child eye contact and parent–child turn-taking. Limited improvements with ceiling effects were observed for parents' book selection skills.
Conclusion: The findings provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of an ESR intervention for babies with HL for promoting parent–child interactions through eye contact and turn-taking.
Authors
Speech Pathologist
