the effects of an early family-centered tele-intervention on the preverbal and listening skills of deaf children under tow years old

Objectives: achieving optimal outcomes in deaf children rsquo;s communication skills depends on the availability of early specialized highquality intervention services. early intervention services through teletechnology could respond to this need. the development of teletechnology has led to the creation of new formats for familycentered services. such measures could address the hearing, speech, and language needs of young deaf children. this study aimed to investigate the effects of teleintervention for providing early interventions to the families of newborns and deaf children.methods: this was a quasiexperimental study with a pretest/posttest and a control group design. in total, 30 deaf children aged 02 years, and their parents were selected by purposive sampling method. then, they were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. the experimental group received the teleintervention program through the internet in 36 individual and group sessions (24 group sessions 12 individual sessions). the control group received the same intervention program directly at the rehabilitation centers for deaf children. to investigate the hearing and preverbal skills, the preverbal communication skills scale and the listening skills scale were used. the obtained data were analyzed using analysis of covariance (ancova).results: the provided teleintervention program was effective in increasing the scores of hearing and preverbal skills in the studied samples. the intensity of the effect on hearing and preverbal skills were 0.57 and 0.28, respectively.discussion: the present study demonstrated the effect of teleintervention program on hearing and preverbal skills in the explored subjects. it also indicated that the provided teleintervention was more effective than direct intervention. therefore, implementing this program is recommended for therapists, the parents of deaf children, and rehabilitation centers for this population.