Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) for Children in Kannada

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to develop a Lexical Neighbourhood Test in Kannada for children aged 6 to 8 year: The study also aimed to check the utility of the developed test on the target group and in children with hearing impairment using cochlear implants. The developed test material consisted of two word lists containing 40 words each which were constructed taking into account the lexical density as well as the frequency of occurrence of the words. Each list contained 20 lexically easy words and 20 lexically hard words. The developed test material was administered on both the groups. Results revealed that there was no significant difference between younger (6 to 6; 11 years) and older (7 to 8 years) normal hearing children. There was no significant difference between the two lists developed thus confirming inter-list equivalency. Both the groups performed better on the easy words and poorer on the hard words and thus there was a significant effect of lexical difficulty on both the groups. There was a significant difference between the performances of children with normal hearing and children with hearing impairment on both the lists for easy and hard words. The results demonstrated that the developed material represented different lexical difficulties. Hence, it can be used to tap the perceptual differences in children and can serve as a valid clinical tool in examining perceptual processes underlying spoken word recognition in Kannada .