The effect of the pragmatic therapy plan on hearing-impaired children

Pragmatic impairment is the main cause of communication difficulties in hearing-impaired children and teaching pragmatic skills in these children is too challenging for clinicians. Thus, creating written and formalized therapy plans can be useful for rehabilitation team, clients and therapists.

A therapy-plan was designed and content validity of it was determined. A single case subject design (a multiple baselines research design) was used to determine the efficacy of the therapy plan to improve four domains of pragmatic in five hearing-impaired children (5 to 8 years). The experiment was divided into three phases including baseline, treatment and follow-up. Treatment phase consisted of 16 sessions and subjects were enrolled in the phase in stair way. The data were analyzed with effect size and visual analysis.

According to expert's opinions, the therapy plan of pragmatic skills was valid. Visual analysis of diagrams showed that all subjects progressed in turn-taking, topic maintenance and response to request for clarification domains and the effect sizes (ES) were high (ES>0.8). Also, there were medium effect sizes (0.8≥ES≥0.2) in certain subjects. In request for clarification domain, some of subjects did not show desired improvement by visual analysis and effect sizes were medium. But, others showed improvement and had high effect sizes.

The therapy plan of pragmatic skills can improve pragmatic skills of moderate-to-severe hearing-impaired children.