Narrative comprehension abilities of children with typical hearing and children using hearing aids: A pilot study

This pilot study explores differences in oral narrative comprehension abilities between children with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss using hearing aids and their peers with typical hearing matched for age and gender. All children were between 3.5 and 5 years of age. Participants were read a patterned, illustrated storybook. Modified versions of this narrative were then read for a Joint Story Retell task and an Expectancy Violation Detection Task to measure both comprehension of key story elements and comprehension monitoring ability. Speech perception was also assessed. Analyses revealed no statistically significant differetices between children with and without hearing loss, but interesting trends emerged. Explanations for the stronger than expected performance of the children with hearing loss on the narrative comprehension measures are discussed. Importantly, this pilot study denwnstrates that the joint story retell task and expectancy violation detection task are viable measures of narrative comprehension for children with hearing loss.