title: Hearing and language development in high risk and normal infants.
abstract: In the present study a group of 147 infants who are at risk for a loss are contrasted with 49 normal infants on an audiological screening battery, which is used to assess auditory and language variables. A descriptive comparison between expected and actual performance levels was made for both groups in regards to their respective receptive and expressive language, auditory localization, and speech detection threshold scores. In general the normal infants were found to perform at or above the expected performance level, whereas the high risk infants seemed to perform at or slightly below expectation. The interrelationships of these language and auditory variables along with age and birth weight were also calculated separately for each group. The direction and significance of these intercorrelations were the same for both groups with the exception of the birth weight correlations. These findings and their implications are discussed.
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005865:Gestational Age; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007230:Infant, Low Birth Weight / Q000523:psychology; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007235:Infant, Premature, Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D012306:Risk; D013017:Sound Localization; D013067:Speech Perception