What is Auditory Verbal Therapy?

Auditory-Verbal Therapy enables those who are deaf or hard of hearing to use their hearing to listen, process verbal language, and speak. Through Auditory-Verbal Parent Guidance Therapy, families make listening and speaking a natural part of daily life. Since 1980, parents choosing Auditory-Verbal Therapy for their children come to AVCC for support and direction. Following a logical set of guiding principles, parents become the primary teachers for their child’s listening and speaking skills. Listening then becomes an integral part of the child’s personality.

Newborn Hearing Screening allows infants in the early days of their lives to begin this process. Auditory-Verbal Therapy is a highly effective method using technology for developing the maximum use of hearing. This approach brings meaningful sound to the brain naturally. Clear speech, natural spoken language and strong literacy skills are results of Auditory- Verbal Therapy. Auditory-Verbal “graduates” can communicate with anyone, using spoken language throughout their lives. Adults who receive a cochlear implant choose Auditory-Verbal Therapy for the same reasons.

AVCC follows the Auditory-Verbal International, Inc® Principles of Auditory- Verbal Therapy. We use Auditory-Verbal techniques, but the most important aspect of Auditory-Verbal Therapy is when parents understand and live the philosophy that people who are deaf or hard of hearing can learn to listen and speak. As the child develops, AVCC supports the parents as part of the educational team. We collaborate with audiologists, early intervention programs, cochlear implant centers, and school systems. Auditory-Verbal Therapy expects children to be included in mainstream education starting at preschool.

AVCC provides a Professional Mentoring Program using the Standardized Curriculum from AVI, Inc®. Many professionals are seeking to be trained and certified, due to the success of Auditory-Verbal Therapy.

Principles of Auditory-Verbal Therapy.

The Unique Principles of Auditory-Verbal Practice

The ten distinct principles underlying auditory-verbal practice as approved by Auditory-Verbal International, Inc. ® (AVI) are unique to AVI and part of the organization’s charter.

1. Using audition as the primary sensory modality in developing speech perception and spoken language.
2. Ensuring, through the guidance by qualified auditory-verbal practitioners, that parents and/or principal caregivers become the primary agents of children’s spoken language development.
3. Preventing or reducing children’s unnecessary reliance on lip reading, this in order to develop or enhance language skills.
4. Using the proprioceptive senses as a supplement to audition in speech acquisition.
5. Integrating talking and listening skills into all aspects of children’s lives and personalities.
6. The practitioner’s consistent use of clearly produced, normal speech patterns under acoustic conditions that provide signal to noise ratios on the order of 30db, this to ensure spoken language presented to children is both optimally salient and can carry the various acoustic cues that enhance the children’s own spoken language communication.
7. “Fostering extensive interactions in the regular educational environment with normally hearing peers.”
8. Inclusion in regular neighborhood schools from early childhood onwards, rather than attendance in self-contained special schools.
9. Daily interaction with hearing peers in order that they may learn normal patterns of speech, language, and social behavior.
10. Participation to the fullest possible extent in normal family life.

Philosophy

The Auditory-Verbal Approach is based on proven theory that most children who are deaf or hard of hearing have some residual hearing ability which can be utilized. With hearing aids this hearing can be sufficiently stimulated early on in life so that speech, language, and listening can be naturally developed. This also applies to children who listen with cochlear implants. The key is to detect hearing loss as early as possible and begin the therapy process immediately. With the passage of the Newborn Screening Bill, hearing impairment is detected at an earlier age and more infants have the opportunity to learn to listen using Auditory-Verbal Therapy Parent Guidance Therapy.

Studies show that Auditory-Verbal Parent Guidance therapy works well for families who have children with all levels of hearing loss: mild, moderate, severe, and profound. The brain is naturally wired for learning language through hearing.

The Auditory-Verbal Therapist guides the parents to emphasize hearing as the primary means for their child to acquire the natural ability to speak. The brain is naturally tuned to process spoken language through the sense of hearing. This occurs with consistent hearing aid and/or cochlear implant use along with intensive experience in listening. Parents and Auditory-Verbal Therapists may spend several years working together, developing language skills, social skills, and refining the speech of the child through lessons and activities performed at the center and at home. Therapy at the Auditory Verbal Communication Center is diagnostic and demonstrative. Parents are active participants in the sessions and are required to do “homework” in between each session. Parents are encouraged to record the weekly goals and the daily progress towards that goal. Parents and therapists keep an “Experience Book” for the child to review important language used at home and in therapy.

Natural language emerges from the child without the use of instruction in lip reading and/or sign language. Auditory-Verbal professionals agree that sign language and lip reading at an early age inhibit the child’s dependence on LISTENING to acquire language. The goal is to teach children that sounds have meaning, to lock hearing into a child’s personality. Children progress through inclusion in regular neighborhood schools from early childhood onwards. The Auditory- Verbal Therapist may continue as part of the child’s educational team.

Because parents are active participants throughout the therapy process, they become the primary teachers for their children. With support and direction from the Auditory-Verbal Therapist, parents become effective advocates who understand their children’s needs.