[Verification of the performance of oralized hearing impaired children in a vocabulary test].
BACKGROUND
Expressive vocabulary of hearing impaired children.


OBJECTIVE
To verify the performance of a group of children with hearing impairment in an expressive vocabulary test.


METHODS
The Language Test for Young Children ABFW-Vocabulary was used in 21 children with moderately-severe to profound hearing losses. Children were divided in three groups according to their age: 3 to 4 years and 11 months; 5 to 6 years and 11 months; 7 to 8 years and 11 months. These children used predominately the linguistic oral code in order to communicate.


RESULTS
All of the groups presented a higher number of correct answers and substitution processes when compared to the number of non-designations. Overall, children with ages between 7 and 8 years and 11 months presented a better performance than those with ages between 3 and 4 years and 11 moths, and with ages between 5 and 6 years and 11 months. Both of these groups presented similar performances.


CONCLUSIONS
Children presented better performances in the semantic fields of animals, means of transportation and shapes and colors; older children demonstrated to have a greater knowledge of words in most of the tested semantic fields. The ABFW Vocabulary Test identified the semantic fields in which children present a greater or lower domain, as well as the identification of the strategies that hearing impaired children use when trying to name an object. These information allow speech-language pathologists to emphasize the semantic fields that are less known to the children and to explore characteristics and attributes of those objects that are already known by them before their presentation.
Costa
Marianni Christina Moreira
MC
Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Escola Paulista de Medicina. marichristina@ig.com.br
Chiari
Brasília Maria
BM
D017677:Age Distribution; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male