S u m m a r y

Paakkolanvaara P (1997)

Hearing defects and school achievement

Psykologia 32/3 (193-200). Rauma ISSN 0355-1067.

 

In this paper I describe the results of a seven year follow-up study. The purpose of the study was to measure, with tests given twice at an interval of seven years, the cognitive abilities and academic performance of hard-of-hearing children with congenital hearing defects of variable severity, aged 7-12 years. The subjects (N=30) had sensorineural hearing loss of 30 to 80 dB, except for three children with a conductive hearing defect. The findings indicated, that the linguistic performance level of the group improved on average during the seven year period, but was lower than the age standard, deteriorating with few exceptions as the severity of the hearing defect increased. Non-verbal perfor-mance levels of the subjects were usually close to the age standard. The average school achievement of the subjects with differing levels of hearing defect did not differ significantly and weakened in many cases during the follow-up period. The reading, writing and mathematical skills of the subjects improved, but some of them still had some difficulties when these skills were measured the second time. In conclusion the problems caused by hearing defects were partly relieved, but they did not disappear entirely during the seven-year period. However, most of the subjects were able to study satisfactorily at regular comprehensive schools.

 

Key words:

Hard of hearing, cognitive abilities, school achievement, reading, writing, mathematical skill.

 

Pirkko Paakkolanvaara, Lic. Phil., clinical neuropsychologist, Department of Phoniatry, University Hospital of Oulu, PO Box 22, FIN-90221 Oulu, Finland.