Title : ( Comparison of the Speech Syntactic Features between Hearing-Impaired and Normal Hearing Children )
Authors: Mohammad Reza Pahlavannezhad , hamid tayarani niknezhad ,Abstract
A b s t r a c tIntroduction:The present study seeks to describe and analyze the syntactic features of children with severely hearing loss who had access to the hearing aids compared with children with normal hearing,assigning them tothesame separate gender classes. Materialsand Methods: In the present study, eightchildren with severe hearing impairmentwho usedahearing aid and eighthearing children matched for age and genderwere selected usinganavailable sampling method based on the principles of auditory-verbal approach. Hearing children hadan average age of 5.45 ±1.9years and subjects had a mean age of 5.43±2.17 years and their rehabilitation had begun before they were 18 months old. The assessment instrument of the study includedthelanguage development test,TOLDP-3. The syntactic skills of these children were analyzed and compared with the hearing children of the same age based on gender. Results:There was a significant difference between the syntactic scores of the hearing-impaired children and the scores of the hearing children of the same age inthe“sentence imitation” (t=−2/90, P<0/05) and “grammatical completion” (t=−3/39, P<0/05) subtests, with nosignificant difference inthe“grammatical understanding” subtest (t=1/67, P>0/05). Moreover, there was nosignificant difference between male and female children with hearing impairment in terms of syntactic skills development.Conclusion:With early diagnosis and timely rehabilitating intervention, children with hearing loss can perform in a similar way to children of their age with normal hearing in some syntactical areas. Furthermore, the gender factor in the present study had noeffect on the development of syntactical skills of children with hearing loss.