A Comparison of Language Comprehension of Children with Hearing Loss and Their Typical Peers

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.