Comparison of Content Aspect in Word Definition Skill in Hearing-Impaired and Normal-Hearing Children between 4.5 and7.5 Years Old

  Word definition skill is one of the sophisticated language skills with linguistic and meta-linguistic knowledge play important role. Hearing impairment in children leads to delays in receptive and expressive language learning. This study aims to investigate and compare the growth of the content aspect of the word definition skill for hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children between 4.5 and7.5 years old.

  This study had a descriptive-analytic cross-sectional method. Statistical population included 37 hearing-impaired (by hearing aid and cochlear implant) and 37 normal-hearing children from 4.5 to 7.5 years old in Karaj. In both groups, there were 10 children from 4.5 to 5.5 years old, 12 children from 5.5 to 6.5 years old, and 15 children from 6.5 to 7.5 years old. The studied groups included 15 hearing-impaired girls and 22 hearing-impaired boys. Our test was the word-defining skill test that had made by Mehri Mohammadi for the first to third grade elementary school children, and then the validity of this test was confirmed by Maryam Malekian for the 4.5 to 7.5 age group. The data were analyzed using t-test statistics in SPSS software (version 22). 

  The results revealed that the performance of hearing-impaired children in the content aspect had a significant difference with normal-hearing children (p = 0.007) and normal-hearing children showed better performance than hearing-impaired children.

  According to the results, there is a delay in content aspect of the word-definition skill as the other language skills in hearing-impaired children and then training and rehabilitation are needed.