Shigetada Suzuki

Teaching Written Language to Deaf Infants and Preschoolers

The acquisition of oral and written language in six deaf infants is compared from ages one and two years for periods of four and five years. The results indicate: (1) Acquisition of written language is not dependent on oral language; (2) Written language teaching can be initiated at about one year of age; and (3) Written language is easier to learn than oral language. These results suggest that written language instruction in early life helps deaf infants acquire language.

A Case of Pure Word Deafness Associated with Landau-Kleffner Syndrome: A Long-Term Study of Auditory Disturbance

A long-term study of auditory disturbance of a female case who had suffered from pure word deafness associated with Landau-Kleffner syndrome was reported. The patient developed this syndrome at age 4, and we continued the follow-up until she reached 20. The following became clear after the investigation: (1) even by the age of 20 her auditory defect had not improved significantly; (2) from an early stage she could not identify either vowels or consonant-vowel syllables; (3) later she had no difficulty identifying vowels, but her consonant-discrimination score hardly improved; and (4) her problem in consonant identification was unique in that she could discriminate between the voiced and voiceless group but had great difficulty identifying the consonants within each group. These findings led to the conclusion that the patient is unable to recognize short time duration consonants due to an insensibility to loudness and a defect in temporal resolution.

Academic Success of Integrated Hearing-Impaired Pupils Who Had Enrolled in the Early Written-Oral Language Program

Data on academic success were analyzed for 37 hearing-impaired pupils who had been trained by the Written-Oral Language Method before school age. Seventy-one percent of pupils whose average hearing level was less than 89 dB and 77% of pupils whose hearing was 90 to 120 dB succeeded academically. Degree of hearing impairment, speech intelligibility, and gender were not important to their success. Linguistic competence evaluated just before enrollment in a normal educational setting at 6 years of age was the only factor significant to their academic success. However, we propose that the investigation of other factors, IQ and age at the start of preschool training program, must be analyzed in more detail in the future.

Acquisition of Oral and Written Language in Children with Severely Impaired Hearing

The effect of the use of written language (WL) for the training of children with severely impaired hearing was compared with that of oral language (OL). WL training was given by means of a WL card method from the age of 1 (group 1; 6 cases) of 2 (group 2; 2 cases). The children in group 1 acquired 3.8 words in OL and 50.5 words in WL as an average number of receptive vocabulary, while 4.5 words in OL and 50.5 words in WL as that of expressive vocabulary by the age of 1 year and 11 months. In group 2, one case acquired 641 words and six-word sentences in OL and 1,066 words and nine-word sentences in WL for reception, while 401 words and five-word sentences in OL and 1,066 words and six-word sentences in WL for expression by the age of 3 years and 6 months. The other case acquired no word in OL but 676 words and nine-word sentences in WL for reception, while 131 words and four-word sentences in OL and 676 words and six-word sentences in WL for expression by the age of 4. The results would indicate that the training of children with poor hearing using WL from an early period of life is effective for the promotion of the language development.

Long-Term Progress in Reading Abilities in Hearing-Impaired Children Trained by the Kanazawa Method

The speech and language training for deaf children at our clinic is done by the Kanazawa method, consisting of reception and production training in sign language (SL) along with auditory/oral language (OL), and written language (WL) training. The present investigation was undertaken to explore long-term progress in reading comprehension abilities in 14 hearing-impaired children who were trained by the Kanazawa method before entering elementary schools. Progress in reading comprehension was evaluated using a standard reading test for hearing peers. The results obtained were as follows: (i) The average score in reading ability just before entering elementary schools was a second level, (ii) this high score was maintained almost longitudinally, and (iii) on the other hand, the hearing-impaired children who had poor reading scores on entering schools continued to score poorly in higher grades. These results suggest that early presentation of WL is effective in the acquisition of reading ability, which is especially difficult for the hearing-impaired.