Background: Assessment measures in evaluating preverbal skills and their progress in very young deaf children are lacking. However, their importance is highlighted by the recent trend of implanting children under 1 year of age. Tait video analysis is a technique for assessing preverbal communication behaviours in very young children with hearing impairment and has been found to be strongly related to speech discrimination and intelligibility outcomes post-implantation.
Aim: To assess feasibility and inter-user reliability of Tait video analysis in assessing preverbal communication skills in children under 1 year of age.
Material and methods: Ten children (five profoundly deaf and five normally hearing) under 1 year of age were assessed by Tait video analysis. Three observers analysed the samples independently, according to the established protocol.
Results: There was complete agreement on 305 judgements and 8 discrepancies between observers over all the measures. Four of the discrepancies occurred in the samples of deaf children and four in the normally hearing samples. Statistical analysis revealed that the correlation coefficients between the different observers were extremely high ranging from 0.94 to 1 (perfect agreement). All of them were found to be statistically significant (p<0.01).
Conclusion: The very high rate of inter-observer reliability suggests that the video recordings of children under 12 months can be scored consistently, and Tait video analysis is therefore a valid method of monitoring the development of vocal and auditory preverbal skills in very young deaf children, either following cochlear implantation or using acoustic hearing aids.