Tehran University of Medical Sciences Auditory and Vestibular Research 2423-480X 22 1 2017 07 31 32 40 Shiva Ebrahimian Department of Speech therapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran Amene Ranjbar Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Mehri Safari Fars Cochlear Implant Center, Shiraz, Iran Firooz Sadighi Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Mahboobe Saadat Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran 2017 05 30 Background and Aim: Hearing-impairment leads to problems in language perception which in turn results in difficulties in language production. The present study investigated hearing-impaired children's ability to discriminate Persian vowels. It aimed to describe the extent to which children have difficulty comprehending and discriminating phonetic features of vowels. Methods: To fulfill this aim, a researcher-made test, which was based on the Auditory Perception Test 2001, investigated the phonetic discrimination of vowels in Persian-speaking and hearing-impaired children aged five to eight years. The test has two sections, auditory-visual and just auditory discrimination of vowels, which included five subtests assessing discrimination of front and back vowels. Through this test, the phonetic discrimination ability of 22 hearing-impaired children was evaluated. The gathered data were analyzed using matched t-test and repeated measures ANOVA. Results: The findings showed that there is a significant difference between correct responses to the sections on front and back vowels (p<0.05). The audio-visual test showed that the /â/ vowel is easier to discriminate than other back vowels. Moreover, in the auditory test the /â/ vowel had the highest mean. The audio-visual test showed that the /i/ vowel is easier to discriminate than the other front vowels (/e/ /æ/). However, the discrimination of front vowels in the auditory test was the same. Conclusion: The results revealed that back vowels were more easily discriminated than front vowels by hearing-impaired children. https://avr.tums.ac.ir/index.php/avr/article/view/330