Current auditory technologies and childhood gramatical development

© 2013 Elsevier España. The new auditory technologies provide deaf children with auditory speech discrimination that was unthinkable a few years ago. The aim of this study was to analyze grammatical development in deaf children using new auditory technologies, and to confirm which variables account for intersubject differences.We evaluated 32 children (aged 3-7 years) with bilateral and congenital or pre-speech deafness and hearing loss greater than 70. dB, who used digital hearing aids or cochlear implants. The Reynell Developmental Language Scales III was administered in each child. The results showed that only 30% of the participants demonstrated age-appropriate language skills.In language comprehension, sentences connecting more than 2 elements caused difficulties, which were greater when these sentences were passive and subordinate. In expressive language, a grammatical level equivalent to that in 3-year-olds caused the most difficulty for most of the participants. Expressive language related to inflections of past tense and third person verbs, and plural noun construction also caused difficulties. The most explanatory variable was age at implantation and at prosthesis fitting in deaf children. The family's sociocultural level was also important.