Effect of identification and intervention age on language development for Mandarin-speaking deaf children with high family involvement.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study is to assess the language ability between early-intervention and later-intervention Mandarin-speaking deaf children, who have normal cognition and high family involvement.


METHODS
There are 29 subjects enrolled. 11 born deaf children received early intervention (7 HA and 4 CI) before 6 months old as study group. Another 18 born deaf children received later intervention (11 HA and 7 CI) between 7 and 35 months old as reference group. They were all regarded as with normal cognition and high family involvement. Their mean assessment age was 50 months old in early group and 51 months old in later group. We used several tools to test their perceptive vocabulary size, to evaluate perceptive language syntax and to compare perceptive and expressive language scores.


RESULTS
Our study revealed there are significant difference between these two groups in the ability of vocabulary size, perceptive language syntax and perceptive language scores. The results showed there is no significant difference between these two groups in their expressive language scores, although their achievement score is higher in the early group.


CONCLUSIONS
It clearly showed the ability of perceptive language in early-intervention deaf children was better than that of later-intervention. The ability of their expressive language showed no difference between them.
Department of Otolaryngology, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei 104, Taiwan. hclin59@ms29.hinet.net
Hung-Ching
HC
Lin
Cheng-Chien
CC
Yang
Ya-Wen
YW
Chiang
Pei-Wen
PW
Hung
Edward Y
EY
Yang
Lillian
L
Wang
Grace
G
Lin
D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment; D003638:Deafness / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D013624:Taiwan; D014825:Vocabulary