A parent report instrument for the assessment of pre-linguistic communication in hearing impaired children.
Esther Dromi.

The utilization of parents’ questionnaires in the study of early language in typically developing children has become a common research practise (e.g., Bates, et.al. 1994). In our work, we tried to test whether this practise is also useful for clinical purposes. The active involvement of parents in the evaluation of their own child has several advantages : a) it provides information about the child’s communicative behaviours at home, b) it enhance parents’ responsibility with regards to the child’s rehabilitation, and c) it contributes to parents’ awareness and understanding of new concepts and terms and helps in establishing a “common” language between the clinician and the parent.

In 1992, Cammaioni, Caselli, Volterra, and Luchanti published in Italian a highly structured research instrument that is based on direct observations of parents on their child in six natural home contexts. In “KESHER” which is a large-scale project of developing language assessment and intervention procedures for Israeli deaf children, we translated the instrument into Hebrew and adopted it for clinical use. In my lecture I will describe the tool, and present data on 48 parents who participated in a research study that was designed to test its reliability and clinical value. Results will be discussed with reference to theoretical as well as implications for intervention with young hearing impaired children.