Mechanism of neurodevelopment of children with hearing deprivation

Abstract

100 children with sensorineural hearing loss, who had confirmed hearing impairment, were examined by routine somatoneurological and surdological survey, as well as standard psychomotor development scales (Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS), Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST), Griffiths Mental Development Scales (GMDS, GMDS-ER) in the city rehabilitation center for children with hearing and speech pathology. Criterion for inclusion in the study were the following: post-conceptual age of the child had to be not more than 36 months at the time of observation; bilateral or unilateral chronic sensorineural hearing loss or deafness and/or the presence of auditory neuropathy, confirmed by objective methods with modern audiological examinations for the core group; the absence of hearing loss, set by the modern objective methods of audiological examination for the comparison group; assessment of psychomotor and speech development of a child with at least two scales from the selection below. The survey results were analyzed using nonparametric statistical methods. Next Bayesian networks were used as efficient, compact, and intuitive way to represent knowledge related to uncertainty. Patterns of mental development, motor skills, speech and social functions in children with hearing impairment were obtained. The technique, which, depending on the factors affecting the trait under study, can help to predict with certainty the likelihood of various normal and deviant development of the child.