SLPPilotPerspectives of the ASHA special interest groups2025

Yoga as a Fatigue Intervention for Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Krystal L Werfel, Jessica Mattingly, Emily Lund

PMID 42111254

WHAT IT FOUND

Five of nine children with hearing loss reported less fatigue after a single 20-minute restorative yoga session.

Sight word reading did not improve. The study was too small and lacked a control group to confirm yoga caused the change.

Key findings

01Five of nine participants reported less fatigue after the session, with three showing decreases of 17.5 points or more.

02Sight word reading efficiency did not improve after the yoga session.

03Seven of nine participants read more nonwords after the session, though the effect size was small.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The study included only nine children, making it underpowered. There was no control group, so natural recovery or other factors cannot be ruled out. The fatigue measure was a self-report scale developed for this study, not a validated standard tool. The TOWRE-2 is not designed for short-term progress monitoring, so reading results may be unreliable.

Declared interests

None reported.

The easy way to misread this

Do not conclude that yoga reduces fatigue or improves reading in children who are DHH. This was a small pilot with no control group, and the improvements were inconsistent and small.

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