SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SEVERE TO PROFOUND HEARING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN ESTABLISHMENT OF A DATA COLLECTION FOR EARLY INTERVENTION IN HEARING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN IN IRAN

The main goal of early detection of hearing impairment in children is early intervention. There is growing interest in early detection of hearing impairment in developing countries. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the spoken language development in severe to profound hearing impaired children and compared their speech intelligibility with normal hearing children at the same age. Nine severe to profound hearing impaired children below 2 years old out of the primer 42 cases were selected for this survey. They receive aural habilitation and also speech therapy after beginning the speech production. Speech intelligibility test of these children was recorded on audio-tape, when they read five questions which can be answered with one word only, at the age of 4, 5 and 6 in comparison with 27 normal hearing children at the same age. At the age of 4 the mean speech intelligibility score of the studied group was 31.77% (SD 12.17) and the control was %96 (SD 2.23). At the age of 5, this score was %51.22 (SD 14.42), the control one 97.85% (SD 1.93). Finally at age 6 it was 72% (SD 18.97) for hearing–impaired group and 99.22% (SD 1.18) in control one. Severe to profound hearing impaired children acquired spoken language but not at the same level. In general, their speech development showed about 2 to 3 years delay. Their speech intelligibility was acceptable for severe group around the age 6 but almost semi–intelligible for profound group at the same age.