Is One Ear Good Enough? Unilateral Hearing Loss and Preschoolers’ Comprehension of the English Plural
JSLHR Research Note Is One Ear Good Enough? Unilateral Hearing Loss and Preschoolers’ Comprehension of the English Plural Benjamin Davies,a,b,c Nan Xu Rattanasone,a,b,c Aleisha Davis,b,d and Katherine Demutha,b,c Purpose: The plural is one of the first grammatical morphemes whether an auditorily presented novel word was singular acquired by English-speaking children with normal hearing (e.g., tep, koss)orplural(e.g.,teps, kosses)bytouchingthe (NH). Yet, those with hearing loss show delays in both plural appropriate novel picture. comprehension and production. However, little is known Results: Like their NH peers, children with UHL demonstrated about the effects of unilateral hearing loss (UHL) on children’s comprehension of novel singulars. However, they were acquisition of the plural, where children’s ability to perceive significantly less accurate at identifying novel plurals, fricatives (e.g., the /s/ in cats) can be compromised. This withperformanceatchance.However,thereweresigns study therefore tested whether children with UHL were able that their ability to identify novel plurals may improve with to identify the grammatical number of newly heard words, age. both singular and plural. Conclusion: While comparable to their NH peers at identifying Method: Eleven 3- to 5-year-olds with UHL participated in novel singulars, these results suggest that young children a novel word two-alternative forced choice task presented with UHL do not yet have a robust representation of plural on an iPad. Their results were compared to those of 129 NH morphology, particularly on words they have not encountered 3- to 5-year-olds. During the task, children had to choose before.
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