Research Article

Comparison of reading comprehension and working memory in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children

Abstract

Background and Aim: Reading is the most important human need for learning. In normal-hearing people working memory is a predictor of reading comprehension. In this study the relationship between working memory and reading comprehension skills was studied in hearing-impaired children, and then compared with the normal-hearing group.
Methods: This was a descriptive-analytic study. The working memory and reading comprehension skills of 18 (8 male, 10 female) sever hearing-impaired children in year five of exceptional schools were compared by means of a reading test with 18 hearing children as control group. The subjects in the control group were of the same gender and educational level of the sample group.
Results: The children with hearing loss performed similarly to the normal-hearing children in tasks related to auditory-verbal memory of sounds (reverse), visual-verbal memory of letters, and visualverbal memory of pictures. However, they showed lower levels of performance in reading comprehension (p<0.001). Moreover, no significant relationship was observed between working memory and reading comprehension skills.
Conclusion: Findings indicated that children with hearing loss have a significant impairment in the reading comprehension skill. Impairment in language knowledge and vocabulary may be the main cause of poor reading comprehension in these children. In hearing-impaired children working memory is not a strong predictor of reading comprehension.

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IssueVol 22 No 1 (2013) QRcode
SectionResearch Article(s)
Keywords
Reading comprehension working memory hearing loss
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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Rezaei M, Rashedi V, Gholami Tehrani L, Daroei A. Comparison of reading comprehension and working memory in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children. Aud Vestib Res. 2017;22(1):67-74.