Original Research Article
Year: 2017 | Month: June | Volume: 7 | Issue: 6 | Pages: 49-55
A Comparison of Language Comprehension of Children with Hearing Loss and Their Typical Peers
Pinki Singh
Speech Language Pathologist, Department of ENT, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Children with hearing impairment (HI) encounter problems related to poor comprehension at morphological, syntactical and lexical level. So, assessment of comprehension skill in HI is imperative.
Purpose: Comparison of language comprehension of children with HI including Cochlear implant (CI), Behind the ear (BTE) hearing aid users and typical peers.
Method: The Assessment of Comprehension and Expression (ACE) 6-11 Test (Adams et. al. 2001) was administered to 75 subjects of age range 9 to 12 years from integrated schools in Mumbai. Group I: - CI, Group II: - BTE users, Group III: - Typical peers.
Results: Post –hoc tests reveal that performance of group I is at par with group III while group II performed poorly on all comprehension subtests of ACE.
Conclusion: Comparable performance on ACE tests may be attributed to the advanced amplification i.e. CI with early intervention coupled with intensive auditory verbal therapy.
Key words: HI, CI, BTE.