Relationship between conversational repair strategies and cognitive-linguistic skills in children with moderate hearing loss in Ahvaz, Southern Iran

Conversational repair skills are essential for establishing mutually successful verbal communication. Cognitive and linguistic disorders can have negative effects on these skills. Children with hearing loss have special cognitive and linguistic issues. This study was performed to contribute to the paucity of data on conversational repair strategies used by hearing impaired children. The participants included 58 children with moderate hearing loss (38 boys and 20 girls) aged 6 to 7 from Ahvaz city. A cross-sectional study design was used. Frequency of using different types of repair strategies in ten repair situations was calculated. Scores of intelligence, memory, word finding, lexical richness, and mean length of sentences was obtained through cognitive-linguistic tests. Data was analyzed employing an independent t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and logistic regression. A direct correlation was observed between clarification strategy and communicative social intelligence (p=0.045). A direct correlation was observed between applying different types of conversational repair strategies and linguistic abilities in children with moderate hearing loss (p<0.05). Children with moderate hearing loss (age: 6-7 years) use repetition more than any other strategy to repair conversation. One unit increase in word finding ability or in mean length of sentence predicts one unit increase in the degree of using repetition strategy.