The receptive and expressive language development of Turkish hearing-impaired children

Hearing-impairment has many negative effects on language development but some factors as early diagnosis, beneficial hearing aid and therapy can decrease and even eliminate the negative effects. The aim of this study is revealing the effects of diagnosis time, the duration of hearing aid usage and the type of hearing aid on language development of Turkish hearing-impaired children. The experimental group of 30 children was selected from the children in Dokuz Eylül University, the Faculty of Medicine the Department of Otorhinolaryngology Audiology Unit. They were suffering from mild-moderate or moderately severe-severe bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and using a hearing aid or cochlear implant. The control group of the same number of children were from Dokuz Eylül University, Narlıdere Nursery School. They had no mental or auditory problems. In order to qualify the children?s receptive and expressive language development, Preschool Language Scale (PLS4) was used twice with a three-month interval. It was found that the receptive and expressive language age of the hearing-impaired children was lower than their chronological age. However, when they were retested after 3 months, it was recorded that their receptive and expressive language development improved. It was found that the duration of the hearing aid usage and the threapy affected the language development whereas the type of the hearing aid did not affect the language development significantly.Key Words: Hearing-Impairment and Language, Language Development, PLS4.