Development of expressive language and social skills in children with normal hearing and hearing impairment

Expressive language is the most basic and widespread means of communication; children with hearing impairments are one of the largest groups of children with speech and language disorders. Therefore, this study compares the relationship between the development of expressive language and social skills in children with cochlear implants (CIs), hearing aid (HA) users and normal Persian-speaking peers aged five to seven years old.

The present study is a cross-sectional comparative study. 45 children in three groups; normal hearing, CIs and HA users were selected by convenience sampling. The child’s communication and social skills were assessed using Matson and children’s communication checklist (CCC) tests. Through the analysis of a descriptive speech sample of language indicators, the mean length of utterance- morpheme (MLU-m), number of different words (NDW) and the percentage of intelligible utterances (PIU) of the child were obtained and examined. ANOVA test was used to compare the groups and Pearson test was used to examine the correlation between variables.

The mean score of CCC test, PIU and NDW are significantly different in the three groups. MLU and Matson subtests are not significantly different in three groups. Correlation between variables was different in each group.

Communication skills, intelligibility, and lexical diversity are significantly different between normal and hearing- impaired children. MLU and Matson subtests are not significantly different in three groups. The correlation patterns among different subtests of CCC and Matson for children with hearing impairment were different form normal hearing children.