Investigation of Early Literacy Skills in Preschool Children With Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to compare the early literacy skills of children with cochlear implants with 60-72 months of preschool and / or special education to the results of children with normal hearing. For this purpose, the following questions were sought. In this study, "Demographic Form" containing the general information of volunteer families and children was included in the study and Early Literacy Test-EROT was applied to evaluate the early literacy skills of children. As a result, word knowledge between two groups, receptive and expressive language, general naming, knowledge of function scores were statistically different; in the phonological awareness sub-tests, the difference between separating the word into syllable, combining syllables, eliminating the first sound of words results with cochlear implants were statistically significant between two groups. However, there was no statistically significant difference between groups in terms of rhyme awareness, matching the first sound of words, matching the last sound of words, separating the sentence into words, eliminating the last voice of words and total phonological awareness scores; moreover, it was found that CI users had lower scores in the knowledge of letter, listening comprehension subtests and EROT total scores, and the difference between the groups was significant.

Investigation of early literacy skills of preschool children with hearing loss

“…In literature, girls showed a little advantage over boys in language development in research with normal hearing children [ 22 ] as well as in studies with children using CIs [ 12 ]. Pistav Akmese et al [ 30 ] evaluated the early literacy skills of children with cochlear implants attending a kindergarten and/or special education center with EROT. They did not find a significant difference between genders in terms of EROT subtests.…”

“…Even children with mild hearing loss have auditory memory difficulties, articulation impairment, and delay in the development of receptive and expressive language. As the degree of HL increases, children's speech production and vocabulary decrease,speech perception, literacy skills and academic success are reduced [ 29 , 30 ]. Hearing loss, whether congenital or acquired during the prelingual phase, influences a child's language development, and causes delays in social, cognitive, literacy and emotional development as compared to peers.…”

Narrative to Investigate Language Skills of Preschool Children

“…Pistav Akmese et al (2019) suggested that in the typical age group of 61 -72 months, there was no significant relationship between genders with a test of early literacy subtests (receptive vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, the knowledge of alphabet, and listening comprehension).…”

Early Listening Skill on Lesson Study-Based Activities

“…Listening skills are vital in a child's development because they allow the child to function properly in society. Listening is the process of structuring sounds and speech in the mind as a result of the hearing, focusing the attention and understanding stages (Oduolowu & Oluwakemi, 2014;Piştav-Akmeşe et al, 2019). When developing these skills, it is important that a child become active listener, which means that he uses what he hears from others as part of the communication process.…”