Parent-Child Interaction Therapy as a Behavior and Spoken Language Intervention for Young Children with Hearing Loss

Purpose: The importance of early intervention for fostering language in children with hearing loss has been well documented; those that facilitate parent engagement are particularly effective. Listening and spoken language outcomes among children with hearing loss continue to fall short compared to hearing peers, despite improvements in hearing technologies. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) as a behavioral intervention for children with hearing loss and its applicability as a language intervention. Method: PCIT effectiveness was evaluated for children with hearing loss (PCIT treatment group: N = 18). For a subset of the treatment group (matched experimental group: n = 6), pretreatment and posttreatment language samples were compared to a matched control group (n = 6). Results: Significant changes were observed in parent skills and child behavior from pretreatment to posttreatment for the PCIT treatment group. A subset of the treatment group (matched experimental group) with available matched controls (matched control group) demonstrated a significant increase in utterances and a trend toward significant increase in receptive vocabulary compared to the control group. Conclusion: PCIT is a promising intervention for children with hearing loss that empowers parents to engage in optimal indirect language stimulation, improves parent-child interactions, improves child behavior, and promotes spoken language skills.