The grammatical morpheme deficit in moderate hearing impairment

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Grammatical morpheme (GM) acquisition in children with moderate hearing impairment (HI) acquiring spoken English is not well understood.
• Understanding these acquisition patterns is crucial for targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of moderate HI on GM use in children's speech.
• To explain the observed patterns of GM acquisition in this population.

Main Methods:

• Collected and analyzed elicited and spontaneous speech from children with moderate HI and a control group.
• Compared GM production rates, error types, and accuracy order between groups with equivalent mean length of utterance (MLU).

Main Results:

• Significant differences in correct production of five GMs were found between groups.
• The HI group produced possessive -s and plural -s less frequently, but progressive -ing, articles, and irregular past tense more frequently.
• Input frequency best explained the overall pattern of GM accuracy, which resembled that of second language learners.

Conclusions:

• Children with moderate HI may fall below a critical threshold for spoken language input, making them more sensitive to input frequency.
• Increased auditory input of GMs could positively influence GM development in children with moderate HI.