What is it about?
How do children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) process spoken language, and what happens when the speaker speaks more quickly? To investigate this, we studied children aged 7-12, some with normal-hearing (NH) and some who were DHH, fitted with hearing aids and cochlear implants. The children listened to sentences and were asked to press a button when they heard a specific word. The sentences were spoken at both a normal and a faster pace. The results showed that children who are DHH were generally slower at identifying words in sentences compared to children with NH. However, speaking faster didn’t seem to make it harder for them. Our results suggest that children who are DHH may face delays in how quickly they process spoken language. These delays could affect how well they keep up in everyday conversations or classroom settings, especially when there’s background noise or multiple people talking.
Featured Image
Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash
Why is it important?
For children who are DHH and that attend mainstream education, spoken language processing plays a big role in school and daily communication. Even small delays in processing language may have an impact on learning and social participation. With more research into the factors that influence spoken language processing in these children, we can better understand what they need to thrive socially and academically. This knowledge can help us create environments—both in classrooms and in daily life—that are better adapted to support their development and communication.
Perspectives
I am very thankful to all the children and their families who donated their time to participate. I hope that this research gains awareness in some of the challenges that spoken language environments pose on children who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Rosanne Abrahamse
Macquarie University
In our study, the children who are Deaf and Hard of hearing were on average 100ms slower to recognize words than the children with normal hearing. I think it will be important to find out what children may miss out on as a result of being consistently a little bit later than their peers to "get" what's being said.
Titia Benders
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Investigating the Effects of Speaking Rate on Spoken Language Processing in Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, May 2025, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2025_jslhr-24-00108.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
