Language acquisition in hearing impaired children

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Markus Hess; Professorin Dr. Martina Penke; Professorin Dr. Monika Rothweiler
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2008 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 74585897

Intact hearing is a main prerequisite for an unimpaired acquisition of spoken language. For children with a permanent hearing loss this is not given, despite modern hearing aid technology. Our DFG-project on Language aquisition in hearing impaired children started in 2009, concentrating on language acquisition in children with a moderate sensorineural hearing loss, provided with hearing aids. The results of this project are the background for this follow-up application. The project aimed at the development of grammar, and looked for deficits in specific grammatical domains which have been identified as vulnerable domains in language acquisition research. These domains are the subject-verb-agreement paradigm, the verb placement in main and subordinate clauses, and the comprehension and production of complex sentences. The results of the first project can be summarized as follows:(1) The acquisition is impaired in all domains that we have studied. (2) The differences observed can be explained as a delay of about one year. (3) Age of diagnosis, age of hearing aid provision and time span of hearing aid supply does not seem to influence language acquisition in the studied domains. These results lead to new questions, which we want to address in the follow-up project:(1) Do children with a moderate hearing loss catch up with hearing children? If the delay observed in the acquisition of specific grammatical domains fossilizes over time this can no longer be considered a mere delay, but would constitute evidence for a qualitative difference to typically developing children. To address this question we plan to extend data collection to older children with a moderate hearing loss. (2) How does a severe hearing loss affect language acquisition?We want to investigate whether a more severe hearing impairment leads to qualitative deficits in grammatical acquisition and whether the type of hearing-aid supply (hearing aid vs. cochlear implants) affects language acquisition. To address these issues we want to investigate two groups of children with a severe hearing loss: children with cochlear implants and children supplied with hearing aids. (3) How far are the differences in language acquisition characteristic of hearing impaired children?To address this question the data from hearing impaired children shall be compared to data from children with a specific language impairment (SLI) since the grammatical development as well as the perception and/or processing of the input is affected in both groups.The new data will be collected with the same elicitation and test materials. This procedure will lead to comparable data sets, targeting the same grammatical domains. The results of the project will be disseminated to institutions and practicioners. Also, the FINKON test (an auditory discrimination test) which has been developed in the first project will be normalized for application in diagnostic settings.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants