The Duality of Patterning in Language and its Relationship to Reading in Children with Hearing Loss.
Susan Nittrouer
PMID 33344770WHAT IT FOUND
Children with hearing loss had larger phonological awareness gaps than vocabulary gaps relative to normal hearing peers.
By second grade, reading used both phonological and semantic skills. The paper suggests targeting both levels.
Key findings
01Hearing aids or cochlear implants can generally restore aided thresholds to near-normal levels, but hearing loss still degrades temporal and spectral structure needed to learn phonological structure.
02Children with hearing loss had a larger difference from normal-hearing peers on phonological awareness than on vocabulary, and by eighth grade children with cochlear implants were about as good as normal-hearing children at second grade on phonological awareness.
03For children with hearing loss, word recognition was associated with phonological sensitivity and semantic skills.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is a narrative report, not a controlled trial of any reading or language intervention. It summarises longitudinal data and points to other papers for full procedures, so the reader cannot check randomisation, dropout handling, or exact effect sizes here. The children all received spoken-language intervention and were expected to use spoken language in mainstream school, so results may not apply to children who use sign language or have other developmental conditions. The hearing-aid group was much smaller than the other groups, so some associations may be unstable. The main outcomes are correlations and group differences, so they show patterns over development, not proof that a recommended activity causes improvement.
Declared interests
The author reported no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the recommended activities as proof that they improve reading. The paper describes developmental patterns and associations in children with hearing loss, and it does not test the suggested intervention.