Effects of Simulated Hearing Loss on Bilingual Children's Consonant Recognition in Noise.

The study used simulated hearing loss in children with normal hearing, not real hearing loss, so it cannot show what happens for children with actual hearing loss. Only a single mild-to-moderate sloping hearing-loss profile was simulated, and the authors say results may not generalize to other types or degrees of hearing loss. The sample was small, with 23 children total and only 11 bilingual children. The bilingual children were English-dominant, had normal hearing, and had age-appropriate articulation, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence, so the findings may not apply to bilingual children with lower English proficiency, hearing loss, or speech-language difficulties. The test items were short vowel-consonant-vowel syllables, mostly non-words, and several late-acquired English consonants were omitted, so performance on everyday words or all consonants may differ. In the simulated hearing-loss condition, performance was already very low, which left little room to detect noise or group differences. Monolingual children had parents with higher education and professional occupations, so family background may have differed beyond language. A small number of responses, 50 cases, could not be agreed on by testers and were excluded.

Do not conclude that bilingual children with actual hearing loss will have the same consonant recognition as monolingual children with hearing loss. The study used normal-hearing children and simulated only a mild-to-moderate sloping hearing loss, and the authors warn that the results should not be equated with outcomes of bilingual listeners with various real hearing-loss configurations or degrees.