Cases Series

A preliminary study of some pragmatic skills of hearing and hearing-impaired children by story retelling test

Abstract

Background and Aim: Pragmatics refers to speech interactions and the social aspect of communication in language contexts. Due to the crucial role of hearing in language skill development, hearing-impaired children have problems with all aspects of language, including pragmatics. These skills are crucial in children’s daily life. There is a lack of Persian studies on hearing-impaired children. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to describe some pragmatic skills of hearing and hearing-impaired children.
Methods: This descriptive case study was conducted on five hearing-impaired and two normal-hearing 6 year old children. Their pragmatic language skills were studied by the Persian story retelling test. In a quiet room. The children's re-told story was recorded, analyzed, and scored.
Results: There was no difference between the scores of hearing and severe hearing-impaired children. However, children with severe hearing loss and cochlear implant, and hearing children were different in maintaining the subject and sequence of events. Children with profound hearing loss and hearing aid, and hearing children had a significant difference in all aspects except main information. All subjects used conjunctions correctly.
Conclusion: The pragmatic skills of hearing-impaired children are weaker than hearing children. There are also differences between hearing-impaired children's abilities. This difference in pragmatic skills shows the difference in amount of hearing loss, kind of assistive device, effective use of remaining hearing, onset and quality of aural rehabilitation program, and other factors. Therefore, a research with a greater sample size is necessary to explain these differences.

1. Hegde MN, Pomaville F. Assessment of communication disorders in children: resources and protocols. 1st ed. San Diego,
2. CA: Plural Publishing group; 2008.
3. Justice LM, Bowles R, Pence K, Gosse C. A scalable tool for assessing children's language abilities within a narrative context: the NAP (Narrative Assessment Protocol). Early Child Res Q. 2010;25(2):218-34.
4. Fey ME, Catts HW, Proctor-Williams K, Tomblin JB, Zhang X. Oral and written story composition skills of children with language impairment. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004;47(6):1301-18.
5. Renfrew CE. The bus story: a test of continuous speech. 2nd ed. Oxford: C. Renfrew; 1991.
6. Paul R. Language disorders from infancy through adolescence. Assessment & intervention. 2nd ed. St. Louis, MO: Mosby; 2001.
7. Bishop D, Mogford K. Language development in exceptional circumstances. 1st ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1993.
8. Tye-Murray N. Foundations of aural rehabilitation: children, adults, and their family members. 2nd ed. San Diago, CA: Singular Publishing Group; 2004.
9. Most T, Shina-August E , Meilijson S. Pragmatic abilities of children with hearing loss using cochlear implants or hearing AIDS compared to hearing children. J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2010;15(4):422-37
10. Mehri A, Nilipour R, Karimlou M. Comparison of pragmatic competence and performance in two groups of deaf and normal students. Journal of Rehabilitation. 2006;7(3):38-43. Persian.
11. Mosavi N, Shirazi TS, Darouie A, Danaye Tousi M, Pourshahbaz A, Rahgozar M. A study on some pragmatic skills of Persian 4-6 years old hardly hearing children and their normal hearing peers. Quarterly Journal of Rehabilitation. 2009;10(3):60-5.
12. Lotfi Y, Zarifian T, Mehrkian S, Rahgozar M. Language characteristics of preschool children with hearing loss in Tehran, Iran. Audiol. 2010;18(1):88-97. Persian.
13. Damico JS, Müller N, Ball MJ. The handbook of language and speech disorders. 1sted. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing; 2010.
14. Most T .The use of repair strategies: bilingual deaf children using sign language and spoken language. Am Ann Deaf. 2003;148 (4):308-14.
IssueVol 22 No 1 (2013) QRcode
SectionCases Series
Keywords
Pragmatic skills hearing loss story retelling
Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Jarollahi F, Modarresi Y, Agharasouli Z, Jafari S. A preliminary study of some pragmatic skills of hearing and hearing-impaired children by story retelling test. Aud Vestib Res. 2017;22(1):95-102.