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Morphosyntactic abilities of toddlers with hearing impairment and normal hearing: evidence from a sentence‐repetition task
Author(s) -
Novogrodsky Rama,
Meir Natalia,
Michael Rachel
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.1111/1460-6984.12386
Subject(s) - morpheme , psychology , repetition (rhetorical device) , audiology , sentence , language development , hebrew , language acquisition , developmental psychology , linguistics , medicine , philosophy , mathematics education
Background While considerable research exists on morphosyntax of school‐age children with hearing impairment (HI), little is known about development of morphosyntax at younger ages. Some studies show that young children with HI have a delay in language abilities compared with children with normal hearing (NH); conversely, other studies show evidence that they achieve age‐appropriate language development. Aims To investigate whether characteristics of morphosyntactic development displayed by young children with HI are unique or whether they are similar to those of NH children. Methods & Procedures Fifty‐four Hebrew‐speaking children (15 with HI and 39 with NH), aged 22–40 months, completed a novel Hebrew sentence repetition (SRep) task designed to evaluate morphosyntactic abilities. Accuracy on the total correct structure, repetition of content and function words, and repetition of specific morphemes were compared across groups. Outcomes & Results At the earliest stages of combining words to sentences, toddlers in both groups showed a large variation in morphosyntactic development, with no significant difference between the two groups. Children with HI and NH showed similar results for the acquisition of morphemes and various syntactic structures. In the group of children with HI, hearing capability accounted for 28% of the variance of the SRep task. Conclusions & Implications The findings suggest typical morphosyntax capacity at the onset of language development among of children with HI who are diagnosed early and receive intensive intervention.