Factors affecting the speech intelligibility of children with hearing impairment

Abstract

Background: Children with hearing impairment have difficulties affecting their ability to understand speech and general communication development. It is essential to understand the background of the factors affecting young children's speech intelligibility in the Pakistani setting.

Objective: To explore the factors affecting speech intelligibility among children with hearing impairment.

Methods: A total of n=107 individuals were selected for the 6-month study at GMT clinic, Siemens Hearing Clinic, Hearing and Speech Care Clinic, and RHS in Islamabad using non-probability convenience sampling. Children between the ages of 6 and 12 who had mild to profound sensorineural hearing loss and could express themselves at the phrase level met the inclusion criteria. Speech-impairing conditions and progressive or conductive hearing loss were included in the exclusion criteria. Using the Assessing Intelligibility Worksheet, data was collected, in which 17 utterances with 57 words spoken by the therapist participants were repeated and the responses were noted by the therapist. Multiple linear regression, descriptive statistics, and percentage distribution were all analyzed using SPSS 21.

Results: A multiple regression model was run to predict intelligibility utterance from age, gender, type of hearing aid, technology of hearing aid, degrees of hearing loss, and talkativeness. This model significantly predicted speech intelligibility of hearing aid users {F (8, 98) = 42.905, p<0.001}. All variables cause 77.8% (Adj. R2=.778) variance in speech intelligibility of hearing aid users.

Conclusion: The study concludes that there is a considerable impact of gender, the technology of hearing aids, degree of hearing loss, and talkativeness level on speech intelligibility while no significant impact of types of hearing aids concerning Behind the ear and receiver in the canal on children's speech intelligibility.