Introduction
Children with hearing impairments strongly require special education interventions to properly develop social and communication skills. But it appears that in some countries, regions, cities, etc., these interventions are carried out at a suboptimal level; therefore, it is paramount to study the results of interventions on-site to improve them.
Literature review
Our literature review shows that early interventions do allow young children with hearing impairments to better develop social skills, more effectively adapt to their environment, and become more active members of their community. A number of interventions are proposed in the reviewed studies. However, there is often space for both improving the interventions and the quality of their implementation on-site. Besides, little data is available on the implementation of interventions in particular regions, and Saudi Arabia is among such regions.
Rationale
It is known that the interventions are beneficial for young children with hearing impairments and that the interventions are sometimes carried out at a suboptimal level. Also, our literature review shows there is little data available on the interventions in Saudi Arabia. Thus, it is important to study how the interventions are carried out in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to be able to improve the quality of their implementation in that region.
Method
The intervention consists of a number of training lessons during which the teachers working with groups of auditory impaired students will engage them in social activities. The results will be assessed by filming the children during breaks at school for a week before and for a week after the interventions and measuring the difference in time that the children from the working groups will spend interacting with peers before and after the interventions. All the children (including those classmates of the children from training groups who do not have hearing impairments) will also fill in surveys to measure their attitudes towards one another, before and after the intervention; they will indicate whether they would like to play with their peers (in particular, importantly, the peers from the training groups). The results obtained before and after the intervention will be compared to see whether the attitudes of children changed after the intervention.
Limitations
Children from the experimental and control groups will come from different schools, which means that external factors might influence the outcomes of the experiment. In addition, the sample of the study is rather small, which means that it will be necessary to generalize the obtained results with caution.