Early childhood education: a means to earlier diagnosis of hearing impairment in the multihandicapped.

Detection of congenital or infantile hearing loss is often delayed in otherwise normal children, but even greater delays occur in the multihandicapped. Neonatal hearing screening and high risk register techniques have not had universal acceptance. A collaborative project between medical school otology and audiology personnel and a school for multihandicapped children under the age of 3 years in the Department of Special Education in another university has significantly reduced detection time and provided speech, language and other remedial therapy while otologic diagnosis and educational functional assessment proceed. The investigators and staff are bilingual. Parents learn to observe and work with their own child at the school and in the home.