Fred Arthur Fisher

ASLP 4045 - Basic Rehabilitative Audiology

Module 4, Assignment 2: Summary of Auditory Training Curriculum

The Listening and Communication Enhancement (LACE) is a program designed by Dr. Robert W.

Sweetow and Dr. Jennifer Henderson-Sabes at the University of California at San Francisco. It is

designed to develop attention and to improve a patient's focus by helping patients to develop

skills and learn strategies for dealing with situations when hearing is inadequate.

It's a little like those brain training games designed to help with cognition and memory, but for

hearing. It is designed for those with hearing aids and is built upon the fact that hearing aids

help with hearing, but not with listening. LACE is a series of listening exercises one usually does

online which combines sensory and cognitive elements can enhance the central nervous

system’s ability to encode acoustic cues.

A series of training exercises are designed to help the patients with distraction, processing

speed and working memory. LACES include rapid speech, competing speakers and word

memory exercises.

These exercises, and LACE in general, all hep the patient engage in active, rather than passive

listening. Combined with a hearing aid's ability to enhance hearing, LACE training has been

shown to have significant effect on a patient's ability to understand conversation in noisy

environments.
Designed by Sue Watkins, SKI-HI is a Language Development Scale designed for children who

are deaf or hard of hearing and their families.

Infant language skills are hard to assess due to a lack of standardization. SKI-HI attempted to

overcome this assessment barrier by listing the expressive language and receptive language a

child might demonstrate normally. The child is then tested for enough observable receptive and

expressive

language skills to obtain a good profile of a child's language ability. Unusual for scales of this

kind, it does not emphasize early auditory items and a child is given credit for their use and

understanding of signs. This made it the most widely used assessment of language

development for infants and young children who are deaf.

Some of the criticism of SKI-HI comes from the fact that it must be administered appropriately

by parents, who likely have limited experience in data collection.

At the first home visit, Ski hi is shown to the parents/ caregivers. The scale is left with the

parents who observe and check the child’s expressive and receptive language behaviors.

Never-the-less, this system has shown to be statistically both valid and reliable.