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Objective Early diagnosis and coherent rehabilitation programs play a key role in improving receptive and expressive language and communicational skills of deaf children. Communication with their parents could influence the development of languages and communication skills in these children. It is important to ensure parental involvement in the rehabilitation of deaf children as parent-therapists show the necessity for the provision of a comprehensive family-centered rehabilitation program along with the diagnosis of hearing loss and audiological and etiological evaluations.
Materials & Methods This is an experimental study, with pre-test and post-test design. Sixty-two 0-2 years-old deaf children (30 girls and 32 boys), who either had undergone cochlear implant surgery or were candidates for cochlear implant surgery and had medical records at the Cochlear Implant Center in the Rasul Akram Hospital, were selected using purposive sampling. The subjects were then randomly divided into two groups (experimental and control groups). The subjects of the experimental group received the Navayesh parent-based comprehensive rehabilitation program in 18 group and individual sessions (6 group sessions and 12 individual sessions). To investigate early language and communication skills, the Ages and Stages Questionnaires, third edition, and the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile were used. In addition, the Univariate and Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used for the analysis of data.
Results The findings of this study demonstrated that post-test average scores in communication skills increased in the experimental group compared to the control group with respect to pre-test (43.33). In addition, the MANCOVA results suggested that Navayesh comprehensive rehabilitation program was effective in increasing the scores in the areas of communication skills, expressive language, and symbolic behavior (P<0.001).
Conclusion The results are indicative of the effect of the Navayesh parent-based comprehensive rehabilitation program on the development of early language and communication skills of deaf children. Therefore, it is recommended that this program should be used at rehabilitation centers for deaf children, aiming at training parents as the primary therapists of deaf children.

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Objective Deafness is one of the most complex sensory disorders that leads to a major decline in auditory (listening) and preverbal skills. Research shows that reading books has provided patterns of communication and preverbal skills to deaf children. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of online dialogic parent-child book reading on the preverbal and listening skills of deaf children under three years old.
Materials & Methods This research was a one-group quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design. The study sample comprised 10 hearing parents with their deaf children under 3 years old who were members of the Deaf Family Association of Iran and the Deaf Center of Iran. First, the parents and their qualified children were purposefully identified (based on inclusion criteria). Then, from all the people who met the study criteria, the people who declared their readiness to participate were selected as study samples. Before starting the online dialogic parent-child book reading program, the preverbal skills test (pointing, joint attention, imitation, and take turns) and listening skills (little ears) were administered as a pre-test. Online reading sessions were held for 20 sessions, three days a week. Parents went online at a specific time (10 AM on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays). Each day a book with pictures and story-related content, book descriptions, questions, and more was posted in the WhatsApp group. After the online dialogic parent-child book reading program, the test of preverbal and listening skills (little ears) was performed as a post-test for the sample group. The paired t-test was used to analyze the obtained data.
Results The results of this study showed that the online dialogic parent-child book reading program caused a significant increase (P<0.005) in the post-test preverbal skills test score (imitation, joint attention, pointing and take turns) and listening skills (P<0.005) compared with the pre-test score of the sample group.
Conclusion Dialogic parent-child book reading is one of the parent-centered programs that is benefecial for deaf toddlers. The results showed the applicability of dialogic parent-child book reading in improving the listening and preverbal skills of deaf children.