Evaluation of hearing, language and articulation characteristics in children with problems according to denver II developmental screening test

ABSTRACT Evaluation of hearing, language and articulation characteristics in children with problems according to Denver II developmental screening test The aim of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of hearing, recipient language, expressive language and articulation in children with developmental problems according to developmental screening test. Preschool children aged 5 years to 5 years and 11 months without any disability were included in the study. The study was carried out in two steps. DENVER II development screening test was applied in the first step. Screening was continued until 50 abnormal or suspicious results were obtained according to DENVER II test scores. In the second step, 50 children with abnormal and suspicious results (reserch group) and 25 children with normal outcomes (control group) according to DENVER II test were evaluated; for hearing characteristics with screening audiometry, for language features by TİFALDİ (Turkish Expressive and Recipient Language) Vocabulary Test and for articulation properties with AAT (Ankara Articulation Test), and the results were compared between two groups. The results of 149 children who underwent Denver II screening test revealed that; 95 (63.8%) were normal, 34 (22.8%) were suspicious, 17 (11.4%) were abnormal and 3 (2%) were not tested. It was observed that all children in the control group passed the hearing screening, whilst 3 of the children in the research group were left from the hearing screening. There was a statistically significant difference in the comparison of the AAT scores between the groups, excluding those left from the hearing screening (p <0.001). When the TIFALDI receptive language standard scores and expressive language raw scores of the groups were compared, a significant difference was observed (p = 0.032, p = 0.033). In this study, it was determined that the children who have problems as a result of developmental screening test may have problems in the development of hearing, language and speech, and the importance of screening of hearing, language and speech characteristics in addition to the developmental follow-up of preschool children have revealed. It would be useful to plan studies involving diagnostic evaluations in these areas. Keywords: Articulation disorder, Denver II, expressive language, hearing screening, receptive language,