title: Syntactic development in Japanese hearing-impaired children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study examined syntactic development of auditory comprehension of sentences in Japanese-speaking school-age children with and without hearing impairment.
  
  
  METHODS
  In total, 592 preschool and school-age children (421 normal-hearing and 171 hearing-impaired) were included in this cross-sectional observation study conducted using the Syntactic Processing Test for Aphasia for Japanese language users. Linear regression analysis was used to determine the estimated age at which each syntactic structure was acquired.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Acquisition of syntactic structures was observed in hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children. Basic word order sentences of agent-object-verb and the goal benefactive construction were acquired at preschool age (earlier group), whereas reverse word order sentences of object-agent-verb, source benefactive construction, passive voice, and relative clauses were acquired at school age (later group). The results showed that many hearing-impaired children may not acquire Japanese grammatical structures until the age of 12 years.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Adequate screening for language development for school-age hearing-impaired children is required for an effective intervention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Okayama University Postgraduate School of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmaceutical Science, Okayama, Japan.
authors.forename: Akie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fujiyoshi
authors.forename: Kunihiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fukushima
authors.forename: Tomoko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Taguchi
authors.forename: Kana
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Omori
authors.forename: Norio
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kasai
authors.forename: Shinya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishio
authors.forename: Akiko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sugaya
authors.forename: Rie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nagayasu
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Konishi
authors.forename: Syuuhei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sugishita
authors.forename: Jyunpei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fujita
authors.forename: Kazunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nishizaki
authors.forename: Masae
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shiroma
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D018479:Early Intervention, Educational; D005260:Female; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary; D014936:Word Association Tests / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data