Language Development In Children With Profound And Prelingual Hearing Loss

The Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology; Dec 2000; Mario A. Svirsky

Most children who are either born profoundly deaf, or become deaf before three years of age, fall significantly behind their hearing peers in all components of oral language: written, spoken, read and signed. Delays are seen regardless of whether the children used oral communication or total communication. Oral communication does not include the use of signs, and total communication uses both oral and sign language.

It stands to reason then that a study of Stanford Achievement Test-Reading Comprehension scores of hearing impaired students, ages 8 to 18 years showed average reading comprehension levels below those of normal hearing third graders.

One of the most important goals of therapy and interventions with profoundly hearing impaired children is the development of an oral language. Both sides of the conflict regarding cochlear implants agree that one important measure of the effectiveness of the implant is whether or not it enhances the development of oral language. It is not adequate to simply document language improvement in children

Language development was assessed with the expressive section of the Reynell Language Development Scales. The test was administered either with total communication or oral communication, and has three components: structure – assessed the complexity of expressive language from pre-linguistic vocalizations, through the use of complex sentences; vocabulary – assesses the child’s ability to name objects and pictures, as well as to describe internalized concepts; content – assesses the more creative uses of language. The scores were converted to a language age score based on normative date from 1,319 children with normal hearing.

I found this article to be interesting and informative. This study was conducted to serve as a point of reference that can be used in future studies to show the efficacy of various interventions which are intended to improve language skills in children with hearing loss. That this study will be a reference point for future studies assures me that there is consistency, validity and reliability.

The regression analysis showed that the age equivalent language scores were greatly dependent on the age of the child at the time of the testing, while age of onset of the hearing loss and the time of auditory deprivation did not have an influence on the language scores, perhaps because this variable was very

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