HEARing CRC Supervisor: Mridula Sharma

HEARing CRC Project: R1.1.3 

Title:  Speech Errors in Children with Hearing Loss in New Zealand

Young children typically display a range of developmental speech errors such as final consonant deletion, fronting and voicing that resolve by age five. International studies show that children with significant hearing loss continue to display developmental and non-developmental “unusual” phonological patterns even when hearing loss is identified early and early intervention is implemented. A recent exploratory study in New Zealand revealed that children with hearing loss have speech errors beyond the age where these errors typically resolve which negatively affect their speech intelligibility.

The primary aim of this research is to determine whether young school-aged children with hearing impairment in New Zealand demonstrate these phonological developmental patterns and to determine how their speech compares to their hearing peers. The findings of the current study will inform decisions about speech therapy needs for children with hearing loss and will form the basis for a controlled intervention study that will compare two speech therapy approaches.