Effect of Hearing Impairment on Receptive Language Development among Children Between 2-5 Years

Abstract

Background: Hearing is the process of sound reception by the ear, its manipulation and conduction to brain. The ability to understand words and language is called receptive language. Some children may appear to understand oral language because they may be able to pick up key words and get visual information from surrounding or from gesture even they have difficulty in understanding oral language. Objective: The study objective was to check the effect of hearing impairment on receptive language development among children between 2-5 years. Methodology: This cross sectional study was conducted at the department of Developmental and Behavioral pediatric, Children Hospital Lahore. A total of 45 patients were evaluated to check effect of hearing impairment on receptive language with an age range of 2-5 years. A Performa was used for each patient with respect to his/her age, which was filled out based on history and clinical observation. All the data was entered in SPSS (statistical package for social sciences) for the purpose of analysis. Results: 45 patients with age range of 2-5 years with diagnosis of Moderate Hearing loss were selected. With an age range of 2-3 years most common problems of patients were in vocabulary reception of 500-900 words, identification in 4-5 body parts and understanding of singular and plural things and least common was in telling his/her age by fingers. With an age range of 3-4 years most common problems of patients in vocabulary reception of 1200-2000 words, couldn’t understand concept of yesterday and today, had no recognition of three shapes and couldn’t understand simply why questions and least problem was in identification of loud and soft sounds. With an age range of 4-5 years most common problem in patient was in following three steps command and least problem was in responses to inside, outside, behind and on top. Conclusion: It is concluded that receptive vocabulary was delayed in children with moderate hearing loss. Keywords: Receptive language, hearing loss, language development, hearing impairment