Language comprehension and cognitive processing in children with a hearing impairment

Abstract

This study explores sustained attention, selective attention, verbal working memory, visual working memory and language comprehension in Danish children with a hearing impairment, children with specific language impairment and normally developed children aged 7 to 12. The main aim is to explore if children with a hearing impairment are late in their language comprehension development and language comprehension development, attention and working memory compared to children with specific language impairment and normally developed children. It is a cross-sectional study and includes 16 children with a slight-to-severe hearing impairment, 11 children with specific language disorder and 25 normally developed children. The overall findings show that, in general, the group of children with a hearing impairment score lower on language comprehension, attention and working memory compared to the group of normally developed children, whereas they score higher compared to the group of children with a specific language disorder.