Central Auditory Maturation and Language Development in Children with Hearing Loss: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The present study was aimed to know and compare the relationship between language development and P1 maturation in children with hearing impairment and normal hearing children. Twelve children with normal hearing sensitivity (control group) and 13 children with bilateral severe to profound hearing loss (clinical group) were taken. Participants were divided into 4 sub groups based on their language age and participants in both the groups had language age ranging from 1 to 5 years. Subjects in both the control and clinical group were tested on a test battery including auditory long latency response (ALLR). P1 latency was considered for further analysis. The mean P1 latency decreased as the language age increased from 1 to 5 years in both the control and clinical group, but this was not statistically significant. The ALLR waveform morphology improved and the presence of P1, N1, P2 and N2 components was increased as the language age increased. Within a given language age group, children with a higher language age had earlier P1 latency than the children with a lower language age. P1 latency were found to be longer in clinical group compared to control group in all the language age groups, but this again was not statistically significant.