2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
3/20/2018 | 9:40 AM - 10:40 AM | Determining the Validity of the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview: A Parent-Report Tool for Infants and Toddlers | Agate A-C
Determining the Validity of the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview: A Parent-Report Tool for Infants and Toddlers
The Vocal Development Landmarks Interview (VDLI) is a parent-report tool designed to evaluate pre-lexical and early lexical stages of spoken language development in children, ages 6 to 21 months. In the era of newborn hearing screening and early confirmation that infants are deaf or hard of hearing, intervention programs need sensitive measurement tools that allow them to monitor outcomes for children under 2 years of age. The VDLI consists of four sections: 1) Warm-up, 2) Precanonical behaviors, 3) Canonical behaviors, and 4) Word productions. The VDLI is unique in presenting Power Point slides containing audio samples of authentic infant vocalizations. Samples are often presented in a paired-comparison format to make target vocal behaviors and developmental contrasts clear and understandable for parents. An earlier version of this measure was found to be sensitive to developmental changes in children who are hard of hearing, and those data will be recapped.
Two validation studies will also be discussed. The first study involved administration of the VDLI to 160 parents of hearing infants (6 to 21 months) to gain normative data and insights about the tool. Results of this study suggested that the VDLI is sensitive to developmental changes in early vocal development in hearing infants and toddlers. The second study involved the collection of Language Environment Analysis (LENA) samples from 40 of the children in the larger study. This allowed the research team to directly compare parent report with experimenter-conducted analyses (counts, transcriptions) of the LENA recordings to assess agreement. This analysis was conducted to garner information about the degree to which parents were able to judge a variety of infant vocal behaviors. Results of this analysis suggested that the VLDI has promise as a parent-report tool. Insights for further modification of the tool were gleaned.
- Participants will identify behaviors that are characteristic of specific infant vocal stages.
- Participants will discuss ways to support families in reporting about their infants' vocal development.
- Participants will identify three main conclusions from research aimed at validating the VDLI parent-report tool.
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Presenters/Authors
Mary Pat Moeller
(), Director, Center for Childhood Deafness, Language & Learning at Boys Town National Research Hospital , marypat.moeller@boystown.org;
Mary Pat Moeller, Ph.D. is the former Director of the Center for Childhood Deafness, Language & Learning and the Language Development Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. Her research explores factors influencing the outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. She was co-principal investigator with J. Bruce Tomblin of an NIH-funded, prospective, multi-site, longitudinal study of spoken language development in children who are hard of hearing. Dr. Moeller conducted NIH-funded health communication research related to Newborn Hearing Screening and early intervention. She and her colleagues at Boys Town National Research Hospital developed parallel websites (www.babyhearing.org and www.audiciondelbebe.org) as part of their efforts to disseminate information on early identification. Dr. Moeller has published and lectured internationally on topics related to developmental outcomes and early intervention practices for children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
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Anne E. Thomas
(), University of Nebraska-Lincoln, athomas16@unl.edu;
Anne E. Thomas, Ph.D., began as a lecturer in the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders in August 2016. She currently coordinates the Deaf Education program, and teaches academic courses that focus on preparing professionals to work effectively with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Prior to joining the faculty at UNL, Anne worked as a teacher of the deaf in both Virginia and Pennsylvania, where she taught middle and elementary school students who were deaf and hard of hearing. Anne earned her master's degree in special education with a specialization in deaf and hard of hearing students from the University of Pittsburgh. Anne completed her doctorate in early childhood deaf education at UNL in May of 2017. Her dissertation research focused on assessing the validity of measure that she co-authored with Dr. Mary Pat Moeller and Dr. Sophie E. Ambrose, researchers at Boys Town National Research Hospital-Center of Childhood Deafness. This measure, the Vocal Development Landmarks Interview, is designed to assess the early vocal development of infants and toddlers who are at risk for speech and language delays. Anne’s primary area of interest is assessment of young and school-aged children who are deaf and hard of hearing.
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Sophie E. Ambrose
(), Boys Town National Research Hospital Center for Childhood Deafness, Language & Learning, sophie.ambrose@boystown.org;
Sophie E. Ambrose, Ph.D, CCC-SLP, is Director of the Communication Development Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH). Her recent research focuses on examining the relationships between the communication development of toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing and the communicative behaviors of their caregivers (NIDCD R03 grant). She has been a co-investigator on another NIDCD-funded grant, the Outcomes of Children with Hearing loss study, and its second grant phase, Outcomes of School Age Children who are Hard of Hearing. Her current work is designed to test the effectiveness and assess the feasibility of implementing two innovative interventions that use coaching models to support families of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Prior to her time at BTNRH, Dr. Ambrose completed her Ph.D. under the direction of Dr. Marc Fey at the University of Kansas, and then served as a research associate in Dr. Laurie Eisenberg’s laboratory at the House Ear Institute. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Mary Pat Moeller’s Language Development Laboratory.
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