A comparative study of performance of normal and cochlear implanted children in two phonological awareness tests.

Phonological awareness skills include three levels syllabic، intra- syllabic and phonemic awareness، and have major influence on speech and reading and writing abilities. Thus، the assessment of children abilities in these levels is important. This study aimed to investigate and compare the performance of normal and cochlear implanted children in two types of phonological awareness testsMethod & Materials: The population of this cross-sectional study eighteen normal and eighteen cochlear implanted children 5-5. 5 years from the cochlear implant centers in three hospitals in Tehran and the Tehran University dormitory married، respectively. Thereafter، their phonological awareness skills were evaluated in auditory-visual modality (2010) and visual modality (2009). Finally، the data were analyzed using Mann Whithney and Spearman non-parametric tests in the spss (16. 0) software.

Cochlear implanted children، when compared with normal children، had lower scores in both Visual - Auditory and Auditory phonological awareness tests (p< 0. 001). Average cochlear implantation group in both “Visual – Auditory” and “Auditory” tests was: 16. 17 (6. 1) and 6. 72 (5. 9)، respectively and in normal children group was 40. 5 (3. 9) and 77. 76 (13. 5). Both groups had better performances in the first test than the later one (p< 0. 001). There was also a correlation between children''s scores on the two tests; but in the cochlear implanted children، this correlation was lower (r= 0. 582) than the normal ones (r= 0. 785).

The visual – auditory test for use of the images، for assessment of phonological awareness skills in children with cochlear implants are more suitable and hearing test for the assessment of phonological awareness skills in a more sophisticated level، is useful.