Early intervention: Outcomes and issues

This article concerns research and clinical issues in the provision of early intervention to young deaf children and their families. The existing outcome literature on the use of Oral-only and Total Communication approaches is reviewed. Then, the methodological and practical difficulties of outcome research are explored. The authors propose a developmental/transactional, clinically-based process model for evaluating the effectiveness of early intervention on the basis that we need to better understand how the interactions of both family and therapist/intervenor attributes relate to more or less beneficial outcomes of intervention.