Verb Retrieval in Children with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Verbs are grammatically more complex than nouns and are relatively more difficult for children to acquire. Hearing impaired children find it difficult to retrieve verbs. Earlier studies on verb retrieval in children with hearing impairment have focused on articulation and other speech deficits. The present study was an attempt to describe verb retrieval impairments in children with hearing impairments in terms of grammatical complexity. The study was carried out on ten children with hearing impairment (with sensory neural hearing loss) and 20 typically developing children. Verb retrieval abilities were measured through action naming test. The performance was analyzed in terms of correct and incorrect responses. Typically developing children performed better compared to hearing impaired children. The incorrect responses were further analyzed for incomplete sentences i.e. usage of noun phrase only, usage of verb phrase only and sentences with no subject- verb agreement. The results showed that children with hearing impairment used only nouns predominantly and they also used sentences with incorrect subject verb agreement and modified tenses inappropriately compared to typically developing children.

Keywords: hearing impairment, verb retrieval, grammar