European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

RELATION BETWEEN THE AGE OF IDENTIFICATION AND LANGUAGE SKILLS, VOCABULARY SIZE IN HEARING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN

Rajeev Ranjan*, Mukesh Ranjan, Rampravesh Kumar and Sapna Bhatt

ABSTRACT

To build a Vocabulary and develop a lexicon of words in the language, children not only have to encode the phonological representations of spoken words but they must also map phonological representations onto meanings which can be done mainly through auditory modality. The aim of the study, to relate vocabulary size to early identification and intervention in hearing-impaired children.15 subjects each in the age range of 4 to 5 and 5 to 6 years were selected, all subjects had severe SNHL as deaf. Al the subjects were attending normal schools and also they were attending Speech therapy regularly from the period of 1 to 2 years. All the subjects were assessed using a Vocabulary list developed by Subba Rao (1993). These measures were statistically compared by paired t-test. T-values for vocabulary measures shows that, there was a significant difference between the two, indicating that 4-5-year-old hearing impaired children had higher vocabulary sizes for comprehension and expression. 4-5 years showed better vocabulary size than 5-6 years, indicating that early identification of hearing impairment is essential to provide adequate training before the critical period is over because early intervention has a positive impact on the child's language development. However, the control group of subjects could not be done due to the untying construct. Furthermore, accurate measures will be needed for the next level of studies. It is concluded that the identification of hearing-impaired children is optimal for effective intervention to improve communication skills, Vocabulary, language development, and behavioral adjustment.

Keywords: Language, Hearing, Speech, Vocabulary, Children, Hearing Loss.