Research Article

Syntactic Comprehension in Persian-Speaking 4-6 Grade Students with and without Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Background and aim: This study aimed to investigate the comprehension of various Persian syntactic structures in hearing-impaired (HI) children and compare it with that of their typically hearing (TH) peers.
Methods: After obtaining ethical approval, 17 Persian-speaking children with severe-to-profound hearing impairment in grades four to six (mean age: 12.7±1.4 years; 12 boys, 5 girls) were recruited from Baghcheban schools in Tehran. All participants had been diagnosed and received cochlear implants before the age of two and had undergone all necessary rehabilitation programs. A matched control group of 17 typically hearing peers was also selected.The Persian Syntactic Comprehension Test (Mohammadi et al., 2019) was administered individually in a quiet room at each participant's school.
Results: HI children performed poorest on passive, object relative, and noun phrase dependency structures, while their best performance was on simple declarative and coordinate structures. TH children performed near ceiling across all structures. Significant differences were found between groups across all grades (p < 0.05). Within-group comparisons showed no significant grade-related differences in either group (p > 0.05), though a gradual non-significant improvement was observed in the TH group.
Conclusion: The primary difficulty for HI children lies in comprehending complex syntactic structures involving syntactic movement and long-distance dependencies, not merely longer sentences. Persistent difficulties in these structures highlight the need for targeted, structure-specific assessment and instruction in rehabilitation programs.

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Hearing loss Persian-speaking children comprehension syntactic structures
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1.
Ghatreh F, Abbasi H. Syntactic Comprehension in Persian-Speaking 4-6 Grade Students with and without Hearing Impairment. Aud Vestib Res. 2026;.