The Audiologist’s Starring Role in Auditory-Verbal Therapy

By Stacey R. Lim and Karen MacIver-Lux

This article is a part of the January/February 2022, Volume 34, Number 1, Audiology Today issue.

Auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) is an early intervention approach for children with hearing loss and their families. Families are guided and coached in the daily use of strategies, conditions, and procedures that facilitate the optimal development of their child’s listening and spoken language skills, with the goal of promoting lifelong success in learning, literacy, and social communication (Estabrooks et al, 2020). 

The auditory-verbal (AV) practitioner is an audiologist, speech-language pathologist, and/or teacher of individuals who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing who, when practicing AVT, follows the principles of listening and spoken language specialist (LSLS) auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) (A.G. Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language, 2021). 

Because the outcomes of AVT depend on high-quality auditory access, the audiologist plays a starring role in AVT by ensuring that babies and children with hearing loss have excellent auditory access to all sounds of speech so they can hear, process, and learn spoken language effectively through listening (Lim and MacIver-Lux, 2016). Simply put, the achievement of desired outcomes in AVT depends heavily on an effective and collaborative relationship among the parent, audiologist, and AV practitioner.

Audiologists and the Principles of LSLS-AVT: A Case Study

AVT is guided by 10 principles (A.G. Bell Academy, 2021), which are rooted in evidence-based and evidence-informed knowledge (Estabrooks et al, 2020). 

Doreen Pollack, one of the pioneers of AV practice, presented guiding principles for acoupedics in the classic text, Education Audiology for the Limited Hearing Infant (1970).

These principles were adapted into the guiding principles of AVT by Auditory-Verbal International (AVI) in 1994 and into the principles of the listening and spoken language specialist (LSLS) AVT by the A.G. Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language in 2007 (Goldberg and Flexer, 2012). 

These principles are mirrored in the following case study discussing the role that the audiologist plays in the collaborative management of a four-and-a-half-year-old child with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss.