Comparision of Articulation Among Children Using Digital and Non Digital Hearing Aids

Abstract

Hearing aids have been used successfully and efficiently for many decades for rehabilitation of hearing impaired children. In present era, advancement in technologies has brought varieties hearing aids that enable hearing impaired children to utilize their residual hearing efficiently for speech and language learning. Recently two types of hearing aids are available according to amplification circuitry, i.e. analog and digital. The present study was aimed at comparing articulation of children using digital hearing aids (DHA) with analog, the non-digital hearing aids (AHA) users. A sample of thirty Children with Hearing Impairment, fifteen DHA users and fifteen AHA users, with age range from 8 to 13 years was selected by purposive sampling technique to participate in the study. Picture Articulation Test with the subjective assessment technique was used to assess the articulation of children from speech sample taken in response to picture stimuli. The results showed that both groups of children with DHA and AHA demonstrated the presence of articulation errors. In children using DHA the intelligibility was significantly better than that of AHA users. Significantly children using AHA presented phonetic and phonological errors, but no significant difference found in articulation among male and female children, children with mono aural and binaural hearing aid fittings, and children with different amplification periods. A detailed analysis of articulation with a larger sample of children using both types of hearing aids with more considerations of external and internal variables is recommended in future to further clarify the issue