Speech perception in deaf and hard of hearing Arabic-speaking children

Abstract

The rate of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) people is relatively large in native Arabic speakers in Israel. However, Arabic assessment tools are scarce. The present study reports the procedure of developing two speech perception assessment tools, which are used for hearing loss diagnosis, hearing aids fitting, cochlear implant mapping, and evaluation of progress following rehabilitation intervention. Our closed set test “Arabic Picture Speech Pattern Contrast” (ArPiSPAC), and word perception open-set test, “Arabic AB” (ArAB), were administered to 34 children with moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss, hearing aids users, aged between 4;5—8;11. In addition, the ArPiSPaC was administered to 38 hearing children, aged between 2;6-5;5 in order to obtain a developmental hierarchy. For DHH participants, the findings showed that vowel contrasts were better perceived than consonants, and articulation manner was better perceived than articulation place. The hearing participants' phonological perception hierarchy differed in some interesting features from that of the DHH children. The mean percent of phoneme perception by DHH was M = 60.53%, (SD = 23.87), and the mean percent of word perception was M = 18.5%, (SD = 15.68). Voicing and pharyngealization contrasts revealed the largest Pearson correlation for phoneme and word perception.