Comparison of Auditory P300 Waves and Speech and Language Skills in Children with ‎and without Hearing Loss

Congenital hearing loss causes disturbances in the development of language and speech. The P300 test is an auditory electrophysiological test that examines auditory attention and discrimination abilities. The purpose of this study is to investigate P300 waves and its relationship with speech and language skills in children with moderate to severe hearing loss and compare it children with normal hearing.

This is a cross-sectional study performed in 2022. The results of the P300 test, language and speech tests (SIR, TOLD and Wepman scale) in 21 children with sensorineural hearing loss compared with the results of 21 matched children with normal hearing. All children in two groups were right-handed. Comparison between two groups was performed with t-test. Pearson's test was used to investigate the significant relationship between the results of P300 tests and speech tests.

There was a significant difference between the P300 wave latency results in the two patient and normal groups, but no difference was observed in the amplitude of P300 waves (p> 0.05). Also, all of speech and language tests had statistically significant differences between the two groups. A significant relationship was also observed between P300 latency and speech and language tests (p= 0.01).

The obtained results showed the difference of central auditory processing in hearing impaired and normal hearing children and P300 waves can be helpful in identifying attention and central processing problems.